The Wailing Wall.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 18004, 26 April 1930, Page 13 (Supplement)

The Wailing Wall.

(London Times)

THE Wailing Wall (the Kauthal Ma’arbe or Western Wall of the Jews), where occurred the episodes which produced the explosion in Palestine, is, as Holy Places go in that country, of no great age. Its stones, it is true, may well have been laid under the eye of King Solomon, but the custom of wailing has grown up since the Crusades. For antiquity as a Holy Place it ranks after such immemorial objects of veneration as the Oak of Mamre, the Rock of Sacrifice, or the Tomb of Abraham.

The Wailing Wall is, however, very much more closely connected in the minds of pious Jews with the former greatness of their race than any of these because it is an actual relic of King Solomon and because no pious Jew will approach the

Rock of Sacrifice for fear of treading upon he forbidden site of the Holy of Holies. So far back as can be remembered the narrow little courtyard, some flve-and-twenty feet wide, at the bottom of the Wailing Wall has been a cul-de-sac just over 50 yards long. It is a public place, and everybody has the right to go into it, but the Wall itself, the pavement in front of the Wall, and the houses which overlook the court are the property of a Moslem Waqf, or pious foundation A Moslem pious foundation may be, and frequently is, put to ordinary lay uses, just as a house may be owned in this country by a Cathedral Chapter and leased for use as a shop or cinema. Many Moslem waqfs were originally constituted in order to preserve family property from the rapacity of the Sovereign, as they were, while being nominally devoted to the upkeep of some mosque, college, charity, or for the benefit of the Holy Cities of Mecca and A! Medina, burdened with a perpetual pension in favour of the founder’s heirs' or nominees. Thus a Waqf may be a really pious foundation or a sort of family entail with only a formal semblance of piei.y about it. 1

While the courtyard was a cul-de-sac, there was no great difficulty about accommodating lliosc Jews who daily came in ones or twos, or in scores upon the Sabbath, to stand on the Moslem pavement, and lean against the Moslem Wall which used to be King Solomon’s, but within the last few weeks the Moslems have built some staircases through their property so that one of the doors which previously only led into one of Hie houses giving on to the courtyard now opens into a passage-way whch connects the courtyard with the Bab al Magharibe, one of the entrances to the Haram-esh-Sherif, to the south, and a good deal higher up. This means that the courtyard in front of the Wailing Wall has been

Converted into a Thoroughfare. for Moslems (as there is no particular reason to suppose that the passages and staircases through the Moghrabi houses at the south end of the courtyard are open as a right of way for Christians or Jews). The stairs and passage have been built subject to the building regulations now in force in Jerusalem, and have, therefore, official sanction. Indeed, it is difficult to see how their construction could have been forbidden bv the authorities without arousing indignant, and justifiable, protests from the Moslems.

Tiie Jews, however, maintain Hint Ihe thoroughfare for Moslems has been created with the deliberate intention of facilitating an increase in the volume of perfectly legal Irufiic through the courtyard in hopes of therein- annoying the Jews engaged in their devotions at the Wall. To people in this country, who have for sonic generations now been brought up to consider it the height of had form to disturb other people while at their prayers, this may seem -a curious proceeding. In Jerusalem, however, it is still regrettably almost common form' to do this, and innumerable cases can be quoted of grown-up and outwardly rc-

Clash of Creeds in Jerusalem.

spectable laymen and ecclesiastics of a variety of creeds, churches, sects, races, and communities behaving in Holy Places in a way which would be considered in this country disgraceful, even on the part of spiteful and ill-bred children. There may be something in the atmosphere of Jerusalem which seems to dry up the springs of tolerance and sweet reasonableness in the breasts of those who live there for any length of time, and the same atmosphere of

Religious, Sectarian, and Racial Antagonism makes nearly everybody regard the status quo as a thing which must at all costs be preserved so far as everybody else is concerned, but to be undermined and altered if possible for the benefit of themselves. Since the British occupation the status- quo has been almost static, except that one or two new Holy Places have arisen here and there; but in times past the transfer of rights, privileges, and users, or even of the possession of whole shrines from one community to another, was not unknown. For example, the Church of Georgia, once very well represented in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, had, in the period of distres's and poitical eclipse into which the former Kingdom of Georgia passed, to part | with all its rights and possessions; the Church of Abyssinia, under the influence of financial pressure, had to surrender all Its property Inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and only retains the right to use the outside of the roof of the Chapel j of Saint Helena.

So far, however, the Moslems have. very rarely (except under stress of Christian conquest, when the Dome of the Rock became the Temple Church and the Aqsa Mosque was turned into a Royal palace) parted with any of their shrines, and in the present instance maintain that, while they have permitted Hie Jews to use. the courtyard in front of the Wailing Wall for private devotions, the Jews have no right to use the courtyard for congregational worship, with the usual accompaniment of mats, chairs, tables, lights, and the ceremonial screen or partition which usage prescribes between tlie men anil the women.

The Moslems insist that the introduction of these objects anil the practice of congregational praying is an infringement of the status quo, and point to a variety of official rulings, Turkish and Brtish, in support of their contention; and although the mats and other things to the introduction of w;hich objection is made may seem insignificant, Christians are in no position to blame ihe Moslems for making a Mountain Out of a Molehill, as they have to remember with shame that rival Christian Churches have shed blood about the position, not a whole mat or carpet, but of one small corner of a carpet in the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem. The Christians are accustomed by now to the existence of Holy Places cheek by jowl with those belonging to rival Churches (In Jerusalem, unfortunately, “rival" is in most cases the word to be applied to Churches which elsewhere would be quite content to he “sister”), hut the Moslyns have more spacious ideas. The Rock of Sacrifice of the Jews, on which Abraham made ready io offer up Isaac, which afterwards served in turn as the foundation for the great Altar of Sacrifice in front, of the temples of King Solomon, Zerubbabel, and King Herod, and of the High Altar of the Crusaders’ Temple Church, was the spot from which the Prophet Mohamed started on his journey to Heaven while still in this life. Its sanctity in Moslem eyes therefore is such that it, affects its surroundings far and near, and for this reason the Moslems refused to sell the courtyard under the Wailing Wall, although it is nearly 200 yards away from the Rock, when the Jews, in 1919, made an offer to buy the place at any price in reason which the Moslems might fis.