The Shofar was sounded yesterday, on Yom Kippur, at the “Wailing Wall in Old Jerusalem for the first time in more than a decade. The sound was clearly heard by several hundred worshippers at the Mt. Zion services.
Worshippers straining their eyes toward the Old City for a glimpse of Jewry’s most sacred shrine heard the blasts of the Shofar at the close of Neilah services. There was an awed silence until the word was passed that the “phantom shofar” was sounded for a group of Jewish soldiers among the British troops stationed in Jordan.
Life throughout Israel came to a virtual standstill on Yom Kippur. Ports, airports and frontiers had no communication during the Day of Atonement. This year’s readings on Mt. Zion were from a Torah written especially in memory of the Israelis who fell in the War of Independence. A Shofar salvaged from the Bergen Belsen concentration camp was sounded at the end of the Mt. Zion service to which many thousands had made a pilgrimage throughout the day.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
