A Retaining Wall, Not a Temple

The Western Wall is not part of the Temple. It is a section of the retaining wall that Herod's builders raised to support the enlarged platform on which the Temple stood, and its lower courses are engineering rather than sanctuary. Its religious standing comes from proximity: it is the accessible structure closest to the site of the destroyed building, and for most of the last two thousand years the platform itself has not been available to Jewish worshippers.

Simon Sebag Montefiore's history of the city traces how the focus of Jewish devotion in Jerusalem settled on this particular stretch of masonry over time, and how the practice around it developed. Worshippers pray facing the stones, often standing for long periods, and press folded paper notes carrying petitions into the gaps between the blocks, a custom attested for centuries without any single documented origin. The wall is not a temple, no offering is made there, and no commandment requires a visit, which distinguishes the practice sharply from the ancient pilgrimage it partly echoes. What it has instead is continuity of presence: the one place associated with the Temple that Jews have been able to reach, in most periods, without permission from anybody.