Shalom all!

Yesterday, Friday the 2nd of October, I was in Jerusalem with my childhood friend Dan, who is currently visiting Israel. We toured Jerusalem and the first stop was obviously the Kotel (the Western Wall). We took a lot of pictures and videos, some of them very special and exciting; I will sort the files soon and share them with you on this site. I also have a couple of surprises I think you’ll like . In the meantime, until I have everything sorted, I’ll share just two photos with you.

As you may remember, the first time I took prayers to the Kotel, I carried them in this box:

Now, yesterday, even though each prayer was made from a smaller piece of paper, I needed a slightly bigger box. Observe:

Would anyone like to guess how many prayers are in the box? The closest guesser will win a special prize.

As promised, I’ll upload more pictures and videos soon.

Take care and have a good weekend!

Alon

UPDATE Oct. 5th: OK, it’s time to reveal the actual number of prayers + announce the winners. I must say I enjoyed the past two days. This game was fun and I hope to find more of these kinds of joyful games. Are you ready? (drum roll please)

First, the people who guessed the closest are:

John Henry Bourke who guessed 3,876 prayers.

Karaleigh Salmi guessed 3,789 prayers (she also guessed one million, by the way).

Denise Lange with a good guess of 3,850 prayers.

George Koprowicz who guessed 3,840 prayers.

And the actual number is… 3,812 prayers!

So, congratulations to the four of you who were the closest, and a special appreciation to George who was off by just 18!

You are each awarded one cookie, reedmable only in Israel. Actually, email me to discuss a somewhat better (yet still modest) prize.

Thank you all for participating, and feel free to suggest more ideas for games.

Best from the Holy Land,

Alon

Related posts:

1. Tweet Your Prayers in pictures
2. Lots of great news!
3. Blessings Upon Your Prayers

Shalom all!

I prepared this short blog post to show you, in pictures, how the prayer-processing looks on my end. Hope you enjoy:

1. Printing: After the prayers have been received, the next step is printing them. Fortunately, I posses the amazing one-of-a-kind prayer printer!

2. Rolling: When the printer has finished printing (or, the toner ran out), the pages are cut to strips using a utility knife. Then the strips are rolled into small scrolls. Here’s how it looks like when we’re just getting started:

And a good few hours later:

3. Driving: Now that the prayers are ready, it’s time to go to Jerusalem!(I should mention that this road-sign was photographed while I was at the passenger’s seat ):

4. Getting inside the Old City: We have arrived in Jerusalem. The Old City has a wall surrounding it, and the Jaffa Gate is the nearest place to go through:

We have reached the Western Wall – the Kotel! Here’s a picture of a wooden box filled with prayers with the Western Wall in the background:

Here’s a picture of me standing on a chair, sticking my hand inside the Wall:

And eventually…

These are just some of the prayers that were placed. At the end of the day, all the prayers from the box found their final resting place in the Western-Wall.

You can also watch the entire process on a video report Reuters made about me & TweetYourPrayers (Link).

Related posts:

1. It was bound to happen sooner or later..
2. Pictures from the Kotel – Placing the Prayers
3. One Kotel, Many Prayers (Pictures)