The priestly blessing (Birkat Kohanim) recited during the Jewish holiday of Passover, which typically attracts tens of thousands of worshippers to the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, will be held next week with a highly restricted “limited prayer quorum,” due to the ongoing war with Iran, according to a joint statement by the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, the Israel Police and the Jerusalem Municipality.
The austere conditions, released on Monday, on the popular Jewish holiday service come as Israel restored the Latin Patriarch’s access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre after an international outcry when the top Catholic leader in the Holy Land was prevented from entering the church on Palm Sunday as a result of ongoing security measures in place nationwide during the war with Iran.
The Sunday-morning ceremony—traditionally, a major public event during the weeklong Passover holiday—coincides this year with Easter Sunday. Authorities say it will be restricted to 50 men in person and broadcast live on the internet.
The twice-annual mass Priestly Blessings, in which male descendants of the Jewish priestly caste known as Kohanim gather to bestow a benediction, generally take place twice a year on the Jewish holidays of Passover and Sukkot.
According to security guidelines in place in major Israeli cities since the start of the month-old war, gatherings and services are limited to up to 50 people, provided that a shelter can be reached within 90 seconds if Red Alert sirens go off, signaling a potential rocket, missile, drone or other incoming projectile.
The Old City of Jerusalem has repeatedly been hit by fragments of Iranian missiles since the joint U.S.-Israeli war began on Feb. 28, with two impacts within several hundred meters of the Temple Mount.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of prayer notes left by visitors from Israel and around the world over the past six months were removed from cracks in the Western Wall earlier this month, ahead of the Passover holiday, and transferred for ritual burial to a site on the Mount of Olives.
The notes included prayers from citizens of Iran and countries in the Middle East—some with no relation to the Jewish people—calling for peace among nations, according to the Western Wall Heritage Foundation.
Among the thousands of prayer notes sent through the foundation’s website this year were messages from Iraq, Yemen, Qatar, Lebanon, Pakistan, Sudan, Jordan, Egypt, Kazakhstan and even from Iran.
The cracks between the wall’s stones are cleared every six months ahead of Passover and Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.
