An account of Jerusalem Jews mourning for the Temple in 1880 ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Saturday, August 02, 2025

An account of Jerusalem Jews mourning for the Temple in 1880

Today is Tisha B'Av, the saddest day of the Jewish calendar, marking the destruction of the Temples and many other tragedies.

The Jews of Jerusalem in the centuries before the rebirth of Israel treated every Friday like Tisha B'Av, crying at the Western Wall. There are many accounts by pilgrims who witnessed this scene.

Here's one account from LIGHT FROM THE EAST.TRAVELS AND RESEARCHES IN BIBLE LANDS in 1880 BY REV. HENRY R. COLEMAN:

Every traveler ought to visit the Wailing Place of the Jews at the cyclopean foundation wall of the temple just outside the enclosure of the Mosque El Aska, and near Robinson's Arch. There the Jews assemble every Friday afternoon and on festivals to bewail the downfall of the holy city. I saw on Good Friday a large number, old and young, male and female, venerable rabbis with patriarchal beards, and young men, kissing the stone wall, and watering it with their tears. They repeat from their well-worn Hebrew Bibles and prayer books the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and suitable Psalms (the 76th and 79th): "O God, the heathen they are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps. . . . We are become a reproach to our neighbors, a scorn and derision to them that are round about us;" Dr. Tobler gives the following specimen of responsive laments from the litanies of the Karaites:

For the palace that lies desolate,
R. We sit in solitude and mourn.
For the walls that are overthrown,
R. We sit in solitude and mourn.
For our majesty that is departed,
R. We sit in solitude and mourn.
For the priests who have stumbled,
R. We sit in solitude and mourn.
For our kings who have despised Him,
R. We sit in solitude and mourn.Another prayer:
We pray thee have mercy upon Zion.
R. Gather the children of Jerusalem.
Make haste, make haste, Redeemer of Zion.
R. Speak to the hearts of Jerusalem.
May beauty and majesty surround Zion.
R. Incline mercifully toward Jerusalem.
May the kingly rule over Zion soon appear.
R. Comfort those that mourn over Jerusalem.
May peace and delight enter Zion,
R. And may the branch sprout in Jerusalem.
The keynote of these laments and prayers was struck by Jeremiah, the most pathetic and tender hearted of prophets, in the Lamentations—that funeral dirge of Jerusalem and the theocracy. This elegy, written with sighs and tears, has done its work most effectually in great public calamities, and is doing it every year on the ninth of the month of Ab (July), when it is read with loud weeping in all the synagogues of the Jews, and especially in Jerusalem. It keeps alive the memory of their deepest humiliation and guilt and the hope of final deliverance. The scene at the wailing place was to me touching and pregnant with meaning. God has no doubt reserved this remarkable people, which, like the burning bush, is never consumed, for some great purpose before the final coming of our Lord.