Out & About
by Varda Littman
Shualim yelcho bah. Foxes will walk there.
The Kosel HaKatan
The Kosel Hakatan (Small Wall) is
the “little sister” of the well-known
Western Wall, and is reminiscent of
the photos and drawings of the way
the Kosel looked before 1948. It is
located 200 yards further north of
the regular Kosel, and is on the same
level as Har HaBayis (the Temple
Mount). Since its plaza is much
narrower, and the majority of
the wall is underground (thereby
concealing much of its height), the
Small Wall is less impressive than the
Western Wall.
The remaining Western Wall of
Har HaBayis is intact for its entire
length, but almost all of the wall is
covered by Mameluke and Ottoman
Turkish period housing, which
uses the wall as support. If you go
into the Kosel Tunnels, you can
follow the Western Wall to its north
western corner.
The area of the Kosel HaKatan is a
tiny, barely 10-meter-long, exposed
(i.e., with no houses covering it)
section of the retaining Western
Wall, within the Muslim Quarter. At
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THE ENGLISH UPDATE
the Kosel Hakatan are Arab homes
adjacent to the Wall. The Wall — the
continuation of our Kosel — serves
as a wall of these people’s homes, to
our great consternation. The Kosel
HaKatan Plaza is only about four
meters wide. Arab residents, who call
it Rabat el-Kurd, use it as a passageway.
There are two small courtyards at the
Kosel HaKatan Plaza. For generations
the elders of Jerusalem used to come
here to recite Tikkun Chatzos. A small
enclosed structure there marks the
spot on which, a few generations ago,
the prophet Eliyahu appeared to one
of Jerusalem’s rabbanim. Others claim
that the Divine Presence itself
appeared here to Harav Avraham
HaLevi Beruchim, a talmid of the
Ari, ztz”l. The structure consequently
became a place to daven. It was later
desecrated by Arab residents of the
courtyard, who used it as a bathroom.
Kotleinu (Our Wall), the informal
committee run primarily by Old
City residents, has been working to
promote and improve conditions at
the Kosel HaKatan. The condition
of the wall is very bad, and Arab
children scramble and climb over it
all the time.
When for the first time in 40
years, in January, 2011, restoration
work was done, it was hoped that
improvements
would
include
renovation of the crumbling stones
of the Wall, a new floor, drainage, and
wheelchair accessibility. It was
thought that a solution would be set
up, possibly in the form of benches or
a mechitzah demarcating a corridor
for the Arab residents to pass through.
However, all that was done was
to add a street sign identifying the
location as the Small Wailing Wall,
in English and Hebrew, and to
remove part of the cluster of useless
building-supports from the far end
of the plaza. The supports had been
there for years and did not allow
access to the entire length of the Kosel
HaKatan. The Arab residents who
live in the adjoining building used to
throw their garbage in the area under
the props. The decades-old scaffolding
had been put up to support an arch
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