London: Many who are unable to make it to the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City can now have their prayers placed on the walls through an address on social networking site Twitter.
The Western Wall now has its own address on the social networking service, and it allows believers around the globe to have their prayers placed between its 2,000 year-old-stones without leaving home.
The website says that petitioners can tweet their prayers, and they will be printed out and placed on the wall, where they will join thousands of other handwritten notes placed by visitors.
The Tweet Your Prayers site does not identify its founders, saying only that the driving force behind it is a “young man from Tel Aviv”.
Visitors to the website are not charged anything for placing a prayer at the wall, but they are invited to make donations by credit card.
It also has sponsored links to an outdoor reception hall on the nearby Mount of Olives and a publisher of custom-made prayer books.
Tweet Your Prayers opened earlier this month but for several years, the Western Wall Heritage Foundation has operated a fax hot line and a website where people overseas can send their prayers and have them printed out and placed in the wall’s crevices.
Twice a year, at Passover in the spring and the Jewish New year in the fall, the wall’s rabbi clears out the accumulated notes which are buried in accordance with Jewish custom, which forbids the destruction of writings that mention God, such as worn or damaged Torah scrolls, prayer books and other religious articles.
The wall is all that remains of the second biblical Jewish temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70AD.
It stands where the bible says King Solomon built the first temple, which was destroyed by the Babylonians more than 600 years earlier.
The Tweet Your Prayers site’s Frequently Asked Questions page asks what recourse users have if their prayers are not answered.
“Take it up with the Big Guy upstairs. We’re just the middlemen!” the Telegraph quoted its reply.
ANI
First Published: Friday, July 24, 2009, 14:28