Mail to Kosel Tripled in Past Year

YERUSHALAYIM
Mispalleim at the Kosel a few days ago. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Mail addressed to Hashem at the Kosel tripled over the past year, the Israeli postal service said on Tuesday.

The reason for the increase is not known for sure, but Globes suggested “it is probably due to the distress caused by the Covid pandemic combined with the fact that overseas tourists have not been able to enter Israel and personally place their notes between the cracks of the walls,” the traditional way.

Israel Postal CEO Danny Goldstein brought a fresh batch of hundreds of prayer notes to Rabbi of the Kosel Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch on Tuesday, which were inserted in the Kosel ahead of Rosh Hashana.

The twice-annual practice of removing kvitlach (prayer notes) inserted into the crevices of the Kosel was carried out last Wednesday. The same procedure was performed before Pesach.

Besides, mail-ins and in-person written notes put in the Kosel, every month, an average of 3,500 notes are sent via the Western Wall Heritage Foundation’s website. The Foundation says it has delivered a total of 804,636 notes to date.

Just since the outbreak of the corona pandemic last year, over 100,000 notes have been sent from all around the world, including: the United States, England, Japan, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Czechia, Russia, Germany, and even some from Jordan and the UAE, the Foundation said.

That figure apparently does not include all those which are placed in the Kosel by mispallelim in person. The Postal Service did not specify the mail-in number for the year.

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