[Photos below.] Armed with wooden poles, Kosel employees this past week removed millions of kvitlach – handwritten notes, faxes and email printouts – from between the ancient stones. The Western Wall Heritage Foundation gives the Kosel such a face-lift twice a year, before the Pesach and ahead of Rosh Hashanah.
The kvitlach will be buried in accordance with halacha, with the laborers – working under the supervision of Kosel rov Rav Shmuel Rabinovich – taking care to not read their content.
Engineers are also conducting test to determine the stability of the stones so that none are in the risk of falling on the mispalelim below.
The notes were collected in boxes seen in the photos and will be buried along with shaimos that are transported to a dedicated genizah on Har Hazeisim.
The Western Wall Heritage Foundation said that “the most notable figure is the increase in the number of kvitlach sent from Ukraine in the last month. Ukraine jumped from number 14 to number 5 in the list of countries with the mos kvitlach sent in March 2022. The ten countries with the highest number of kvitlach sent are the United States, Slovakia, Columbia, England, Ukraine, Brazil, South Africa, India, the Netherlands and Germany.”
{Matzav.com Israel}
How would they know what percentage of kvitlach was from where, to where, or of what request? I thought these papers were private? Are these employees allowed to open and read what’s on the papers? All these “bashert” stories of papers falling out of the wall to tell them who to marry and where to invest, are meant for little lemechel brainwashed sheeple.
They send the kvitlach to the post office to be delivered to the Kosel.