Head rabbi slams publication of Western Wall prayer slips on Facebook

JERUSALEM — In mid-August a Facebook page called, “Notes I took from the Western Wall” started to take off as a user who described himself as “Amos, 41 years old” began to post pictures of prayer slips he supposedly lifted from the cracks of the holiest site in Judaism.

The notes were often deeply personal and usually signed. Some asked to meet a husband or to bear a child, others for peace or for the strength to be more religiously observant. Some weren’t directed at God at all, but at a loved one or a politician.

The page gained more than 10,000 followers in a few weeks but it ignited an angry backlash from the religious community.

For hundreds of years it has been Jewish tradition to write messages to God on small strips of paper and place them in the Western Wall – the last remaining vestige of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. More than a million such messages are left in the Wall each year. However, it is strictly taboo for the notes to be read by anyone other than the author.

The Rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinovitch, was incensed.

“Placing notes in the Western Wall is an ancient custom,” the rabbi told the Israeli paper Yediot Aharonot. “To expose these prayer notes is a despicable act that breaches the intimate pact between man and his creator.”

“The Western Wall is a public place,” he added, “it’s not possible to enforce the security of the private notes. It is the personal responsibility of everyone to honor and respect all of the worshippers and their prayers.”

As the “Notes I Took from the Western Wall” Facebook page gained followers, angry commenters began to attack “Amos,” the page’s founder, questioning the morality of publishing private notes, especially ones that might reveal the author’s identity. The criticism swelled when the page began to be covered in Israeli media.

Then this month, Rabinovitch took his complaint to the police, claiming the page constituted desecration of a holy place and was emotionally damaging to the wall’s visitors. He called for a full investigation.

But before the police had time to address the issue in earnest, “Amos” decided he’d had enough. One day after the rabbi went to the police, the author published a note announcing he would be closing the page.

“So to start with, I’m not Amos and I am not from Holon,” he began. He claimed to have founded the page as satire and that all of the notes were invented and written by him and his friends.

“We ‘apologize’ to all those that were hurt,” he wrote.

Many of the commenters were pleased to see the page go, but some questioned whether the notes were really fake.

“Truthfully, it doesn’t make sense that it’s all fabricated,” Meir Aroch wrote in a Facebook comment. “There is writing here from many different hands in a way that is not easy to fake. You called for people to send you notes and I’m sure that some of them did it. It doesn’t make sense.”

Others claimed that they recognized friends or relatives as the authors of specific notes (some of the notes were signed with first names or mentioned names within the note) and called the page’s anonymous creator a coward for refusing to reveal his identity.

Typically, prayer slips are removed twice a year when the Western Wall is washed and they are buried in the Mount of Olives – the more than 3,000-year-old Jewish cemetery outside the walls of the Old City. But this is not the first time the notes have been intercepted and caused a scandal.

In 2008 when Barack Obama visited Israel during his presidential campaign, he made a stop at the Western Wall and placed an unsigned note in the cracks.

After he left, a Yeshiva student nearby found the note and it was published in Israeli and international newspapers.

The note read, “Lord – Protect my family and me. Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will.”

Maariv, the Israeli newspaper that first publicized the prayer, was criticized and the Yeshiva student later apologized. 

In recent days the Facebook page has gone dormant.