50,000 Receive Priestly Blessing at the Kotel
Thousands of people gathered at Jerusalem’s Western Wall amid heavy security for the holiday Priestly Blessing.
The Western Wall Heritage Foundation estimated Wednesday morning’s crowd at 50,000, while media reports put the number in attendance at between 50,000 and 150,000.
The mass blessing, called Birkat Kohanim in Hebrew, is held on an intermediate day during Sukkot and Passover, two of the three Shalosh Regalim, or pilgrimage festivals, when the Jews would ascend to the Holy Temple. The third is Shavuot. The mass blessing has been held at the Western Wall for the last 45 years.
Hundreds of Kohanim held up their hands and blessed the worshippers, including many visitors from the Diaspora.
The event was presided over by Israel’s chief rabbis, Yitzhak Yosef and David Lau, and by Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, the rabbi of the Western Wall and the Holy Sites of Israel.
More than 3,500 police were deployed across the city for the event to ensure the safety of visitors to Jerusalem, including hundreds at the Western Wall and the Temple Mount, which has been the site of violent clashes between Israeli security forces and Muslim worshippers.
Tens of thousands more worshippers are expected to visit the Western Wall on Wednesday evening for the Hakel ceremony, which takes place every seven years at the end of a shmitta, or sabbatical, year.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.