Purim is a special holiday in the Jewish calendar. We put on costumes, sing, dance, send mishlo’ach manot food packages to each other, and of course read Megillat Esther.
“…it was reversed, the Jews should rule over their enemies.”
(Esther 9,1).
This is the heart of the story of Megillat Esther.
“It was reversed” – all of a sudden, the difficult reality changed, reversed, and the Jews were saved from destruction.
That story and that verse gave hope to Jews around the world for thousands of years, helping them remember that even a harsh reality can change, the hardships can disappear, and salvation and redemption can come.
Also in the Western Wall Plaza, we find sites that changed; places that were once one thing and after they were revealed, within several years, they became something else completely.
Join us in a deep dive into the Western Wall Plaza!
It’s hard to believe, but only slightly more than a century ago, the Wilson’s Arch we know was almost completely hidden from view.
The person who discovered it and wrote scientific articles about it was a British officer and engineer named Charles Wilson (for whom the arch is named).
The arch is built of 23 stone courses and it is 13 meters wide!
When the Western Wall Tunnels were excavated, this beautiful arch was slowly revealed. It was found to have been part of an ancient, two-thousand-year-old bridge that led the people of Jerusalem from what is today’s Jewish Quarter to the Temple Mount, the site of the Temple.
And today? Today, Wilson’s Arch is an important stop in the Western Wall Tunnels. It is where the Western Wall Plaza’s covered men’s and women’s sections are.
Today, the Western Wall Plaza is expansive, illuminated, and crowded with visitors. But a visit here 55 years ago was very different!
For centuries, the Western Wall Plaza was actually the Western Wall alley – a narrow and short road adjacent to the Western Wall.
In the past 50 years, masses of people have been coming to the Plaza. The number of visitors reaches about 12 million per year and to be able to contain them all, the Plaza we know and see today was created.
May everything be reversed for the better!
