The Western Wall in Jerusalem (Yom Yerushalayim 5769/2009)

Just a quick post at the Michtavim blog in honor of Yom Yerushalayim before the flags begin to twirl throughout Jerusalem and the Jewish people throughout the world celebrate the forty-second year since the reunification of Jerusalem and the return of the Old City under Israeli auspices, I figured that you might be interested in a short post at the Seforim blog about nineteenth-century Christian and Jewish perceptions of the Kotel ha-Maaravi, the Western Wall in Jerusalem, by Elliott Horowitz, "'The Howling Place of the Jews' in the Nineteenth Century: From William Wilde to Ahad Ha'am," the Seforim blog (21 May 2009), available here; and see also idem, "As Others See Jews," in Nicholas de Lange & Miri Freud-Kandel, eds., Modern Judaism: An Oxford Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 415-425, esp. 415-419.

For a link to the famous recording of Rav Shlomo Goren, Chief Rabbi of the IDF who would later become the Chief Rabbi of Israel, as he recited the Kel Malei Rachamamim and sounded the shofar while wearing tefillen and being lifted on the shoulders of the Israeli soldiers who liberated the Old City of Jerusalem on 7 June 1967/28 Iyyar 5727, see here; and related to "arguably, the most beloved Jewish photographic image of our time," of the Israeli paratroopers at the Western Wall, see Yossi Klein Halevi, "The Photograph: A Search for June 1967," Azure 29 (Summer 5767 / 2007): 15-27, available here. On recent appraisels of Rav Goren's role as military halakhist, see Chaniel Nahari, "Development of Halakhic Literature for Soldiers from 1880-1975," (MA thesis, Bar-Ilan University, 2003), 57-75; Arye Edrei, "Divine Spirit and Physical Power: Rabbi Shlomo Goren and the Military Ethic of the Israel Defense Forces," Theoretical Inquiries in Law 7:1 (January 2006): 257-299; idem, "War, Law and Redemption: Military and War in the Halakhic Thought of Rav Shlomo Goren," Cathedra 125 (Tishrei 5768 [2008]): 119-148 (Hebrew); and as I noted in a post at the Michtavim blog a half-year ago, among the few small volumes that I purchased at the "International Conference on Contemporary Issues and Halakhah" (December 2008) at Yad ha-Rav Herzog in Jerusalem, was the new new volume from the ReShu"t: Classic Modern Responsa series about Rav Goren's famous responsum freeing agunot from the Dakar disaster, whose husbands were aboard the British-constructed and Israeli-recommissioned Dakar submarine that disappeared in January 1968 (and whose wreckage was located in May 1998) -- and which now join my collection of the volumes of Rav Moshe Feinstein on Halav Aku"m, Rav Yitzhak Isaac ha-Levi Herzog on non-Jews in Medinat Yisrael -- see David Brukner, ed., Rabbi Shlomo Goren's Responsa Regarding Releasing the Agunot of the Dakar Submarine (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 2008), which includes a short biographical sketch (pp. 9-26), followed by an annotated discussion of Rav Goren's teshuva that appeared in in She'elot u-Teshuvot Meshiv Milchama (Jerusalem, 1983-1992), 3:144-213 (see pp. 27-104), with concluding thoughts by Ariel Picard (pp. 107-112), regarding Rav Goren's ruling that the wives of the Dakar's soldiers were not agunot.