The Western Wall, Wailing Wall or Kotel (Hebrew: HaKotel HaMa'aravi; Ashkenazic pronunciation: Kosel; Arabic: حائط البراق‎, translit: Ḥā'iṭ Al-Burāq, The Buraq Wall) is located in the Old City of Jerusalem at the foot of the western side of the Temple Mount. It is a remnant of the ancient wall that surrounded the Jewish Temple's courtyard, and is arguably the most sacred site recognized by the Jewish faith outside of the Temple Mount itself. Just over half the wall, including its 17 courses located below street level, dates from the end of the Second Temple period, commonly believed to have been constructed around 19 BCE by Herod the Great, but recent excavations indicate that the works were not finished during Herod's lifetime. The remaining layers were added from the 7th century onwards. The Western Wall refers not only to the exposed section facing a large plaza in the Jewish Quarter, but also to the sections concealed behind structures running along the whole length of the Temple Mount, such as the Little Western Wall–a 25 ft (8 m) section in the Muslim Quarter. It has been a site for Jewish prayer and pilgrimage for centuries; the earliest source mentioning Jewish attachment to the site dates back to the 4th century. From the mid-19th century onwards, attempts to purchase rights to the wall and its immediate area were made by various Jews, but none was successful. With the rise of the Zionist movement in the early 20th century, the wall became a source of friction between the Jewish community and the Muslim religious leadership, who were worried that the wall was being used to further Jewish nationalistic claims to the Temple Mount and Jerusalem. Outbreaks of violence at the foot of the wall became commonplace and an international commission was convened in 1930 to determine the rights and claims of Muslims and Jews in connection with the wall. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War the wall came under Jordanian control and Jews were barred from the site for 19 years until Israel captured the Old City in 1967 and three days later bulldozed the adjacent 770 year old Moroccan Quarter. The widespread custom of sending Jewish New Year's cards dates to the Middle Ages, thus predating by centuries Christian New Year's cards, popular in Europe and the United States only since the 19 century. The custom is first mentioned in the Book of Customs of Rabbi Jacob, son of Moses *Moellin (1360–1427), the spiritual leader of German Jewry in the 14 century (Minhagei Maharil, first ed. Sabionetta, 1556). Based on the familiar talmudic dictum in tractate Rosh ha-Shanah 16b concerning the "setting down" of one's fate in one of the three Heavenly books that are opened on the Jewish New Year, the Maharil and other German rabbis recommended that letters sent during the month of Elul should open with the blessing "May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year." Outside of Germany and Austria, other Jewish communities, such as the Sephardi and Oriental Jews, only adopted this custom in recent generations. The German-Jewish custom reached widespread popularity with the invention – in Vienna, 1869 – of the postal card. The peak period of the illustrated postcard, called in the literature "The Postal Card Craze" (1898–1918), also marks the flourishing of the Jewish New Year's card, produced in three major centers: Germany, Poland, and the U.S. (chiefly in New York). The German cards are frequently illustrated with biblical themes. The makers of Jewish cards in Warsaw, on the other hand, preferred to depict the religious life of East European Jewry in a nostalgic manner. Though the images on their cards were often theatrically staged in a studio with amateur actors, they preserve views and customs lost in the Holocaust. The mass immigration of the Jews from Eastern Europe to the United States in the first decades of the 20 century gave a new boost to the production of the cards. Some depicted America as the new homeland, opening her arms to the new immigrants, others emphasized Zionist ideology and depicted contemporary views of Ereẓ Israel. The Jews of 19 c. Ereẓ Israel ("the old yishuv"), even prior to the invention of the postal card, sent tablets of varying sizes with wishes and images for the New Year, often sent abroad for fundraising purposes. These tablets depicted the "Four Holy Cities" as well as holy sites in and around Jerusalem. A popular biblical motif was the Binding of Isaac, often taking place against the background of the Temple Mount and accompanied by the appropriate prayer for Rosh ha-Shanah. Also common were views of the yeshivot or buildings of the organizations which produced these tablets. In the 1920s and 1930s the cards highlighted the acquisition of the land and the toil on it as well as "secular" views of the proud new pioneers. Not only did this basically religious custom continue and become more popular, but the new cards attest to a burst of creativity and originality on the subject matter as well as in design and the selection of accompanying text. Over the years, since the establishment of the State of Israel, the custom has continued to flourish, with the scenes and wishes on the cards developing as social needs and situations changed. The last two decades of the 20 century have seen a decline in the mailing of New Year's cards in Israel, superseded by phone calls or internet messages. In other countries, especially the U.S., cards with traditional symbols are still commonly sent by mail, more elaborately designed than in the past. Thus, the simple and naïve New Year's card vividly reflects the dramatic changes in the life of the Jewish people over the last generations     ebay289