Every year, millions of small folded papers come to rest in the crevices of the Western Wall. Requests for healing, prayers for a marriage, whispered thanks, the names of children yet to be born… If you have ever wondered what becomes of that note once it is slipped between the stones, here are the answers — and they say a great deal about the respect surrounding this gesture.
No one ever reads your note
It is the Kotel's absolute rule: a note placed in the Wall concerns no one but the person who wrote it. Tradition regards these papers as words addressed directly to Heaven — reading them would violate the deepest privacy there is. When candidate Barack Obama's note was removed from the Wall and published by a newspaper in 2008, the Rabbi of the Wall publicly condemned the act: you do not read other people's mail, least of all that mail. We tell this story in detail in our article on the public figures who came to the Kotel.
Twice a year, the notes go to the genizah
The crevices of the Wall do not stretch — and yet there is always room for one more note. The secret: twice a year, before Passover and before Rosh Hashanah, the notes are gently removed from the gaps under the supervision of the Rabbi of the Wall. The teams use wooden sticks — never metal, out of respect for the stone and for what it holds — and unfold no paper.
The notes are not destroyed: like any writing that may carry a prayer or a divine name, they are placed in genizah — that is, buried with the honours due to sacred texts, on the Mount of Olives. Your note therefore never ends up in a bin: it rests in the earth of Jerusalem, facing the Wall.
What language should you write in? What to put in a note
Every language rises. Hebrew, English, French, Spanish, Russian, Amharic — the crevices of the Kotel are probably the most multilingual place in the world. Tradition imposes no format, but a few customs have settled in:
People often write their Hebrew first name followed by their mother's (so-and-so ben/bat so-and-so), the form used in prayers for a person. It is better to make a precise request than a vague “may all go well” — healing for a loved one, zivug (a soulmate), parnassah (livelihood), gratitude. And you may write for someone else: praying for another person is considered one of the highest forms of prayer.
And if Jerusalem is far away?
For as long as anyone can remember, those who cannot come have entrusted their note to an emissary — a relative going up to Jerusalem, a traveller, a student. It is an ancient tradition: the messenger, the shaliach, carries another's prayer and places it in their name.
That is exactly what BaKotel does, with today's standards: you write your prayer on our secure form; it is encrypted, then printed sealed — no one reads it, not even the Torah student who carries it — and placed between the stones of the Kotel, with a timestamped photo or video as proof. The thousand-year-old gesture, with the added certainty, from 18 €.