Found this interesting

From Life in Israel - and it's relevant since we were in Israel during the time that our notes were placed in the Kotel:

Cleaning the Kotel for Pesach

The Kotel also needs to be cleaned for Pesach. The difference is that the Kotel is being cleaned not from soup nuts and cheerios stuck in the crevices, but from the abundance of notes stuffed into its cracks.

Gotta make room for the new notes coming in.

Today began the biannual cleaning of the Kotel from its notes. Rabbi Rabinovich, overseeing the cleaning, said that it is performed with the utmost of care and respect for the holiness of the place. They remove the notes using wooden sticks, and not metal sticks - just like metal could not be used on the mizbeiach (altar) so they are not used on the stones of the kotel - and the laborers immerse in the mikva before sticking their fingers in the crevices.

It is all good by me, except for how compares the stones of the kotel to the מזבח. A little respect please. Whether you say the kotel was simply a retaining wall for the structure of the Temple, or it was actually part of the walls themselves, it is still not the מזבח.

Posted by: Robert Woolwine at 08:10 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 215 words, total size 1 kb.