This is the Forward’s coverage of the Western Wall, also called the Kotel, a Jewish holy site in Jerusalem adjacent to the Temple Mount.
Western Wall
The Latest
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Fast Forward Sebastian Gorka’s New Gig: Giving Speeches To Right-Wing Think Tank
Sebastian Gorka has landed several paid positions since leaving the Trump White House. The former counterterrorism adviser is now a paid analyst on Fox News, focusing primarily on national security issues. He also works as a nonresident scholar at the Institute of World Politics. And now he has another gig: Giving speeches to the conservative…
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Israel News Torah In Hand, Leader Of United States’ Largest Jewish Group Roughed Up At Holiest Site
The sky was cloudless when the group gathered in the Old City of Jerusalem on Thursday morning to celebrate the ordination of four new Reform rabbis. But when they tried to enter the Western Wall complex, security guards physically accosted them, attempting to keep them from bringing Torahs onto the main plaza. In the ensuing…
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Fast Forward Rick Jacobs And Reform Rabbis Beaten For Praying At Western Wall
A violent confrontation broke out at Jerusalem’s Western Wall on Thursday, when a delegation of Reform movement leaders tried to hold a Torah-reading service at the site. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, was roughed up by security guards employed at the Western Wall, one of whom threatened to spray him…
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Fast Forward Holocaust Survivors Celebrate Bar Mitzvahs 70 Years Later — At Western Wall
More than 40 Holocaust survivors who were never able to celebrate their bar or bat mitzvahs finally did so last week — at the Western Wall. The event, coordinated by the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and Israel’s Office for Social Equality, was welcomed by participants who never got…
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Community World Jewry Must Rise Above Its Own Inhibitions About ‘Interfering’ With Israeli Politics
I get the same sense of insolence from Israeli officials when the effects of the cancellation of the Kotel Agreement on World Jewry are discussed. “What will they do to us?” I was forced to spend 24 hours with a 5-year-old who isn’t family. I explained the rules of the house several times during his…
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Fast Forward Federations Demands Israel Reverse ‘Divisive’ Moves On Western Wall And Conversion
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — The Jewish Federations of North America called on Israel to reverse its “divisive and damaging” steps to freeze an agreement on egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall and its support of a bill that would grant a monopoly to Orthodox authorities in Israel over conversions to Judaism. The JFNA’s board of…
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The Schmooze Will Smith Visited The Western Wall And Crashed A Bar Mitzvah
Art and life collided today when “Men In Black” star Will Smith visited Jerusalem, home of a very different kind of Men In Black, while filming Disney’s live-action “Aladdin” nearby in the Wadi Rum area in Jordan. You don’t see this too often! Actor and musician #WillSmith at the Western Wall (Kotel) in #Israel ??…
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Fast Forward Ancient Roman Theater Uncovered At Western Wall
JERUSALEM (JTA) — An ancient Roman theater and eight stone courses, or layers of cut stone, were uncovered in excavations in the Western Wall Tunnels in Jerusalem. The preserved archeological discoveries were unveiled to the media on Monday by the Israel Antiquities Authority, following work to remove an 8-meter layer of earth under Wilson’s Arch, the…
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