Who Owns The Western Wall?

Every year, millions of visitors to Jerusalem, visit the Western Wall. A few years ago, my ENT specialist was among those visitors. Like thousands of Jews, he took his son there to mark his Bar Mitzvah. Soldiers serving in the Israel Defense Forces swear loyalty to their nation and homeland at the Western Wall Plaza.  

People from all over the world pay their respects to the Jewish people’s magnificent history by visiting this special site. The ancient, 2,000-year-old stones of the Western Wall have witnessed the Jewish people’s birth, exile, and redemption. This is where the Jewish nation’s past mingles with its hopes for the future.

How then could Muslims claim that the Western Wall is a part of the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City? The claim was made a few days ago before UNESCO, the United Nations’ Paris-based agency that tries to protect cultural treasures around the world.  

In 2010, the British Advertising Standard Agency ruled that an Israeli tourism advertisement containing a picture of the Western Wall with the Dome of the Rock in the background was misleading. The agency felt that the ad implied that the area in which the Wall was located belonged to Israel – for the agency that was false advertising. 

To whom does the Wall really belong – to the Jews or to the Muslims? What is the Western Wall anyway? 

In the year 37 BCE, Herod was appointed king in Jerusalem by the Romans – shortly after he initiated a huge renovation project for the Temple. He hired many workers who toiled to make the Temple more magnificent. He widened the area of the Temple Mount and built four support walls around it. The Western Wall is the western support wall built during this widening of the Temple Mount Plaza.

Just a few days ago I shared with a group of students what Israeli archaeologists found in 2007. They discovered the source of the huge stones King Herod used to reconstruct the Second Temple in Jerusalem. The stones were found at a quarry, along with coins and pottery, dating back to King Herod. Geological and other tests clearly link the present Western Wall to the quarry.

The Second Temple (which King Herod built) was destroyed in the year 70 CE. Despite the destruction that took place, all four Temple Mount support walls remained standing. Throughout the generations since the Temple’s destruction, the Western Wall was the remnant closest to the site of the Temple’s Holy of Holies that was accessible to Jews. Therefore, it became a place of prayer and yearning for Jews around the world.  

In the year 135 CE, the Romans crushed a Jewish uprising and seized total control of Jerusalem - the Jews lost official links to the region. The Romans renamed the region Palestine. 

The name Palestine was taken from Israel's most hated historical enemy, the Philistines, and was given to the area by the Romans as a means of humiliating the Jews to show them the land no longer belonged to them. With a destroyed Temple and no official homeland, the Jews found much solace in the Western Wall, the only remnant of the destroyed Temple. 

Many of those emotions were shattered when the Muslims invaded the Holy Lands in 638. By 691, at the order of Ymayyad Caliph, Abd al-Malik, the Dome of the Rock was completed on the site where the Jewish Temple was destroyed. As is evident today, the Western Wall was retained as the foundation.  

The Muslim presence remained unchallenged until the Crusades in the eleventh century. The Western Wall never seemed important to Muslims because they were in control and the Jews were not strong enough to challenge them. However, the Jewish interest in the Wall never died.

That ongoing interest was evident again in 1929 when violence erupted because a divider was placed at the Wall. In 1948, in keeping with a UN decision, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, including the Western Wall, fell to Jordanian hands. Jewish homes were destroyed and among those killed was the Western Wall’s first rabbi who refused to leave the Wall or his home - he was killed in the bombings.

The Old City of Jerusalem, and the Western Wall within it, were not in Jewish hands from the War of Independence in 1948 until the Six Day War in 1967. During those 19 years of Jordanian rule, Jews were not able to reach the Wall and prayed in front of its ancient stones. 

During the more than one thousand years Jerusalem was under Muslim rule, the Wall was often used as a garbage dump, so as to humiliate the Jews who visited it. However, following the Six Day War of 1967, The Western Wall and Temple Mount were liberated, the city of Jerusalem was reunified, and the Jewish people were again able to come to the Western Wall to pray.

The recent attempt at the UN for Muslims to regain control of the Western Wall, would most likely deprive Jews of their most holy site and return the area to a garbage dump.

Furthermore, to justify the return of Islamic control of the Wall would be to legitimize the Muslim invasion of Jerusalem in the seventh century. Such justification would also ratify the UN’s insensitivity to Israel’s religious heritage. In 1948, when establishing boundaries for the new nation, the UN was wrong to divide Israel’s 3,000 year-old claim to the city of Jerusalem.  

In terms of modern history, Israel’s return to her ancestral home is phenomenal. Unlike under the reign of Joshua in the Old Testament, she cannot kill those who shared the land with her, before independence. The nation must pursue peaceful co-existence. That requires a respectful use of sacred sites, including the Western Wall.

Goodnight Friend

When teenage children feel as comfortable as their parents, with their parents’ friends, something special is happening. We found that to be true after meeting Jack and Karen Mitchell almost 25 years ago.


The Mitchell and Corbin families in Wheaton, Illinois.

Jack & Karen with our daughter, Candace
at a Fountainside church picnic in Florida.

The relationship between our families was so special that we had hoped some lifelong relationship could develop among the children.

Our friend Jack died a few days ago. Last year he was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Recent research suggests the disease is possibly caused by sawdust, allergies, acid reflux, all of which Jack had or was exposed to. The disease causes the lung tissue to scar, thus not allowing oxygen to get through to the cells.

We met Jack in Illinois, shortly after coming to America to pursue advanced studies in 1991. Our paths crossed frequently as I shared the pulpit at the church he pastored in Wheaton. Those engagements often included family meals and opportunities to meet other foreign students studying in the area. 

After relocating, 400 miles seemed near as we travelled to surprise Jack for his fiftieth birthday. He and Karen even travelled further in order to visit us in Florida. The internet kept us together as the Mitchells moved to Budapest and later Kenya. A few months ago we travelled almost 3,000 miles to visit Jack for the last time. 

It was during that visit in California we reminisced on family times, his missionary assignments in the Caribbean, Europe and Africa. We laughed, sang and remembered the Lord Jesus in the ordinance of communion.
I will miss Jack. He was an encourager and very dear friend. At times, he would be the only person to comment on my weekly commentaries. He was an astute thinker and student of the Scriptures. I will miss his insightful comments. Sometimes I wondered why he thought it necessary to get my permission to share my commentaries with his students in Kenya – he was so authentic. He just never wasted an opportunity to bless someone else.

Upon learning of his death, I am discovering that many others around the world share my sentiments.
Like Mausau Elijah, who in 2011 was leading a fellowship group in Jack’s house at Scott Christian University, Kenya. His opening remarks to the group were, "where will you be five years from now"? Among the many answers, Mausau remembers, “Jack, my mentor, friend, teacher, the disciple of righteousness said, 'I will be in heaven.’” 

Jack was right, within five years he is no longer with us. What is obvious from the many tributes paid to Jack, is a sense of loss. Loss for Karen, his wife of more than 47 years. Loss for his four adult children and fourteen grandchildren. Loss for thousands of students, parishioners and friends. Much grief and great loss, but not hopelessness.

When confronted with the loss of loved ones in their church, the Thessalonians got word to the apostle Paul about their emotional and spiritual ambivalence. In his reply, he acknowledged the emotional impact of grief. However, he made a distinction between the grief one experiences when a Christian dies, as opposed to when a non-Christian dies.   

Hear Paul’s actual words, “Brothers, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who fall asleep, or grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). The implication is clear – Christians who die have hope. We understand that inscriptions on tombs and references in literature show that first-century non-Christians viewed death with horror. Death was the end of everything.

Paul contends, Christians should view death differently. For the Christian it is a confidence in crisis. That confidence is not in the loss of the loved one, but the outcome that results from that loss. But how is a confident outcome possible if someone is dead? Isn’t death a cessation of life? 

Actually, in this context, Paul preferred the term “fall asleep” instead of death. The term “fall asleep” conveys the idea of temporariness, as opposed to permanent absence. In the following verse Paul goes on to provide a basis for his “fall asleep” idea. 

He argues, “... Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him” (v.14). Paul resorts to history, not philosophy to substantiate his point. As far as he was concerned, the death and resurrection of Jesus were historical realities. Similarly, Christians who die, will rise again, just as Jesus died and rose again.

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul reinforces this point: “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost...” (1 Corinthians 15:16-20). In other words, the Christian’s hope is not in a mere idea, but in a Person – Jesus Christ. 

It is for this reason, I found it more appropriate to entitle this commentary “Goodnight Friend” – a Good Morning is anticipated when the Mitchell family and Jack will meet again.