Ask around in Jerusalem: almost everyone knows someone who “did their 40 days at the Kotel”. To find a soulmate, for a parent's healing, for a child, for parnassah. The segulah — a word for a practice held to carry particular merit — consists of coming to pray at the Wall forty consecutive days, without missing a single one, carrying the same request each day.
Why forty days?
The number 40 runs through the whole of Jewish tradition as the span of transformation. Moshe stayed forty days on Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. The rains of the flood lasted forty days. Forty years in the desert turned a people of slaves into a free people. Forty days is the time tradition associates with passing from one state to another — the time it takes for something to truly change its nature.
Applied to prayer, the principle is at once simple and demanding: a request made once is a request; a request carried forty days in a row becomes a commitment of the whole person. The constancy is the prayer.
A demanding practice — that is the point
The power of this segulah lies precisely in its difficulty. Forty consecutive days means returning to the Wall in the January rain and in the August heat, on the days when you are rushed, tired, discouraged. For residents of Jerusalem it is already a challenge. For everyone else — almost the entire Jewish people — it is simply impossible without help.
That is why, for generations, people have entrusted their 40 days to an emissary: someone who lives in Jerusalem and commits to carrying your request to the Wall, every day, for forty days. The tradition of the shaliach — the messenger of prayer — gives this relay its full value: the request remains yours, and the constancy is guaranteed by the one who can guarantee it.
Fulfilling your 40 days with BaKotel
We are preparing a dedicated program: your prayer carried to the Western Wall by a Torah student in Jerusalem, every day for 40 consecutive days, with photo proof at the key stages and a certificate at the end. We will open it as soon as our team of students is complete — because a flawless 40-day commitment is not something to promise lightly.
Join the waitlist to be the first to hear when it opens, with no commitment. And in the meantime, the essential gesture remains available: have your prayer placed in the Kotel from 18 €, with proof to back it up — or give a place between the stones to someone who needs it.