Israel's Western Wall Sees Increase in Letters to God during COVID-19 Pandemic

JERUSALEM, Israel - If you want to send a letter to God, where do you send it? Jerusalem of course! But what happens to those letters once they reach the Holy City?

Each year, hundreds of people worldwide address letters to God and send them to the Israel Post. 

“We are keeping a tradition with the Postal Authority, (with) letters that people send to God,” said Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch.

As part of an annual tradition - those letters were placed in the cracks of the Western Wall ahead of next week’s Rosh Hashanah holiday.

“Here by the Western Wall, we know (God says) that My House will be called a house of prayer for all nations. Here is the place that prayers are raised from everyone,” Rabinovitch. 

Rabinovitch says they ask God to hear and answer the prayers. 

“Dear God, please end the Corona pandemic and make my parents buy me a new iPhone and a JBL speaker," writes Aron, a child from Germany, according to a press release from the Israel Post. 

“Forgive me, my Father, I have been unable to repent. Please care for my late husband's soul and the living on earth” writes Sylvia from Ecuador. 

“Dear God, please bring new friends into my life, and tell my family to help me, because most of us do not talk to each other and I have no one to talk to” writes Anna, a single mom from Canada. 

Israel Post CEO Danny Goldstein says the Postal Authority is happy to help people who can’t be here get their prayers to the wall, with “the hope that they will be fulfilled.”

The post office used to bring bags of letters each year to the Western Wall.  Now that people can send their requests by technology, they don’t receive as many but there was a 30 percent increase this year over last year, probably due to COVID.

“People that usually come to pray at the Kotel (Western Wall) but now it’s hard for them to get here so they are sending more letters,” Goldstein said.

Goldstein says the worldwide pandemic led many to ask God for good health, healing and a return to their normal routines.