Battered stones of Jerusalem’s Western Wall get the full treatment

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The ancient stones that make up Jerusalem’s Western Wall are showing the scars of weathering from two millennia of scorching sunlight and driving rain.

To stop them getting worse and to ensure their integrity, Israeli conservators are giving the stones a face lift, mending the cracks and filling out their battered surfaces.

The Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, is an outer remnant of the second of two Jewish temples, built by Herod the Great more than 2,000 years ago and destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

It nestles in Jerusalem’s old city, next to a sacred compound revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, a short walk from Christianity’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Huge crowds gather at the wall for prayer sessions and visitors often stuff notes in cracks between the stones.

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) tracks the condition of each stone and has begun treating the surface of those most in need.

Using a portable lift and a medical syringe, its team delicately injects a limestone-based grout into the gaps and fissures in the stones.

“It is the best possible method of healing the stones and the ultimate defense against weathering,” said IAA’s Yossi Vaknin.

And it is not just the climate that has taken a toll, he said. Plants have taken root and birds nest in the wall, making the repair work even more necessary.

(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch, editing by Ed Osmond)

Top Israeli rabbis, and U.S. envoy, pray for Trump recovery

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s top rabbis prayed for U.S. President Donald Trump to recover from COVID-19 on Monday, invoking his name in a Jewish holiday ceremony at Jerusalem’s Western Wall.

Support for Trump, who recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the U.S. Embassy to the city, is strong among Israelis, who mark the Jewish high holidays this year while under a second coronavirus lockdown.

“May He who blessed our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses, Aaron, David and Solomon send healing to Donald John, son of Fred,” intoned Shmuel Rabinovitch, rabbi of the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site.

“May the Holy Blessed One overflow with compassion for him, restore him, cure him, strengthen him, enliven him,” he said, reciting the traditional prayer for those in ill health, to amens from Israel’s two chief rabbis and U.S. ambassador David Friedman.

They were attending a ceremony, coinciding with the Sukkot festival, in which members of Judaism’s priestly caste bless the public in a chant at the Western Wall.

With Israel struggling against a surge in coronavirus cases, attendance was drastically pared down this year.

Heading to the event as an invited guest, Friedman tweeted that it was “normally attended by thousands, today just 20”.

“I will pray for God’s mercy and healing upon all those throughout the world afflicted with Covid-19,” he said.

(Writing by Dan Williams, Editing by William Maclean)