20,000 attend Pessah priestly blessing at Jerusalem's Western Wall

By JPOST.COM STAFF
20,000 people attended the traditional priestly blessing, birchat hacohanim, at the Western Wall in Jerusalem Tuesday morning. The ceremony, which takes place every Pessah and Succot, attracted less people than expected, said the rabbi of the Western Wall Shmuel Rabinovitch. He attributed this to high temperatures, and the fact that the Succot blessing generally attracts more people than the Pessah blessing. Police and Magen David Adom volunteers patrolled the site, and thousands of bottles of water were passed around to worshipers.