Vintage Kotel

The ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av – Tisha Be’av – is the day in the Hebrew calendar when calamities befell the Jewish people.

By LENNY BEN-DAVID
Western Wall 1929 (photo credit: library congress, american colony collection)
Western Wall 1929
(photo credit: library congress, american colony collection)
The ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av – Tisha Be’av – is the day in the Hebrew calendar when calamities befell the Jewish people, including the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem, the fall of the fortress of Betar in the Jewish rebellion against Rome in 136 CE, and the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. The day is commemorated with fasting, prayers and the reading of Lamentations. In Jerusalem, thousands pray at the Kotel, the Western Wall.
The American Colony photographers frequently focused their cameras on the worshipers at the “Wailing Place of the Jews.” The American Colony founders who came to Jerusalem in 1881 were devout Christians who saw the return of the Jews to the Holy Land as a sign of messianic times.
Of the dozens of pictures at the Wall are several of elderly men and women sitting on the ground or on low stools, customs of mourning practiced on Tisha Be’av.
Other pictures presented here show the very narrow and confined area of the Wall over the ages until the IDF captured the Old City in 1967 and enlarged the Western Wall plaza. The tragedies that befell the Jewish nation are also evident in the pictures of the deserted plaza after Arab pogroms in 1929. The area was deserted, of course, during the 19 years of Jordanian rule of the Old City when Jews were forbidden to pray at the site.
A story is told of Napoleon passing a synagogue and hearing congregants inside mourning. In answer to his question of whom they were mourning, he was told they were weeping over the destruction of the Jewish Temple 1,800 years earlier. Napoleon responded, according to the legend, “If the Jews are still crying after so many hundreds of years, then I am certain the Temple will one day be rebuilt.”
Besides the massive American Colony Photographers’ collection of more than 20,000 photos (taken between 1898 and 1946), the Library of Congress archives contain photos by 19th-century photographers Bonfils, Bergheim, Frith and Good. Until now, the library has not opened these photos to online viewers, citing copyright restrictions. At the request of this writer, the library has assured that within days several of these historic photos will go online with no restrictions and with truly unusual resolution.
They will also be available for viewing at www.israeldailypicture.com.
The photo of the Wall was taken by Peter Bergheim (1813-1875), one of the first resident photographers in the Holy Land. He set up a photography studio in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem; his family owned a bank inside the Jaffa Gate. A converted Jew, Bergheim was well aware of the holy sites of Jerusalem.
Three of his pictures were reproduced by the British Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem by Charles Wilson, who, in 1864, was one of the first surveyors of Jerusalem – above and below the surface of the ground.
The writer served as a senior Israeli diplomat in Washington. Today he is a public affairs consultant and publishes www.israeldailypicture.com.