Between June 5 and June 7, 1967, the legendary battle for Jerusalem took place during the Six Day War. The battle between IDF forces and the Jordanian Legion claimed many casualties but ended with an achievement that would completely change the life of the young state since then – the liberation of all of Jerusalem, including East Jerusalem and the Old City, and above all, the hold on the Western Wall to which the Jews longed from time immemorial.
About two and a half months after the war and the liberation of Jerusalem, which occurred on the 28th of Iyar, the first 9th of Av was marked, which was also the first 9th of Av that Jews could mark at the Western Wall since the establishment of the state. Until the liberation of the Western Wall, the only Jews who could reach it were those who did not identify themselves as Jews, visited Jordan and came there as tourists.
Naturally, the Western Wall, as a historical remnant of the Temple, is a symbol of the great destruction that we mark in Jewish tradition as a day of remembrance, fasting and mourning in memory of the First and Second Temples that stood in Jerusalem and both fell on the same day - the first in 586 BCE and the second in 70 CE. To this day, the Western Wall is a pilgrimage site for prayers, especially during the Tisha B'Av fast.
Now, the Jewish National Fund archive reveals rare photos from the ascent to the Western Wall a few months after its release.
Guarding the Western Wall. Tisha B'Av I after the liberation of Jerusalem, photo: JNF Archive
Sorrow and happiness are mixed together in the first Tisha B'Av prayers at the Western Wall after its liberation in 1967, photo: JNF archive
The Western Wall on Tisha B'Av, 1967. Men, women and children in mass prayer, photo: JNF Archive
They call a lament near the Western Wall. Tisha B'Av 1967, photo: JNF Archive
Efrat Sinai, Director of Archives at the JNF: "Destroyed houses and rubble greeted visitors to the Jewish Quarter after the Six-Day War. The visitors had to skip waves of stones, and every step they took raised blooming dust," she says.
"But even the sight of the destroyed quarter did not prevent the feeling of elation and excitement that gripped the visitors when they arrived at the Western Wall. The moving prayers held on Tisha B'Av that year are now revealed in photographs from the JNF archives, which preserve defining moments in the history of the State of Israel and the settlement in the Land of Israel."
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