_The Jews’ Wailing Place._--Outside the Haram, on the west, and not
very far from the south-west corner, is the Wailing Place of the Jews.
From the Jaffa Gate we may reach it by going down David Street and
through the fruit bazaar, and then turning through a by-lane. The
Wailing Place is a narrow court, in which the temple rampart happens
to be free and exposed in the Jews’ quarter. Every Friday the court is
crowded with Jews who come to read and pray, and bemoan the condition
of their temple, their holy city, and their scattered people. The scene
is striking from the great size and strength of the mighty stones,
which rise without door or window up to the domes and cypresses above,
suggesting how utterly the original worshippers are cast out by men
of alien race and faith. Here we may see venerable men reading the
Book of the Law, women in their long white robes kissing the ancient
masonry, and praying through the crevices of the stones, Russian Jews,
Spanish Jews, German Jews, men, women, and children, with gray locks,
or blue-black hair, or russet beard, and dressed variously, according
to their country--strange and unique is the spectacle! “It reminds one
forcibly” (says Conder) “of the unchanged character of the Jews. After
nineteen centuries of wandering and exile they are still the same as
ever, still bound by the iron chain of Talmudic law, a people whose
slavery to custom outruns even that of the Chinese to etiquette, and
whose veneration for the past appears to preclude the possibility of
progress or improvement in the present.”
_Pools and Fountains of Jerusalem._--Jerusalem is at present chiefly
supplied with water by its cisterns. Every house of any size has one
or more of them, into which the winter rains are conducted by little
pipes and ducts from the roofs and courtyards. These private cisterns
are generally vaulted chambers with only a small opening at the top,
surrounded by stonework, and furnished with a curb and wheel. Many of
them are ancient.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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