Shalom all,

Just wanted to say that next week I plan to go to Jerusalem and the Western Wall again. The exact day is unknown at this time (depends on the availability of volunteers in Jerusalem), but it’s going to be either next Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday (Sep. 29th, 30th and Oct. 1st, respectively).

If you tweet your prayers until next Monday (Setp. 28th), it is most likely that your prayer will be placed in the crevices of the Western Wall next week (I say ‘most likely’ because as we all know there’s nothing certain in life but death and taxes). If you send your prayers after Monday, It’s going to require a lot of efforts on my behalf to get them ready in time, and so I make no guarantees.

Moreover, please tweet about this service to all your followers, and give them a chance to send their prayers on this occasion. I’d like to take this opportunity and really give many people something meaningful to them.

Please don’t leave your prayers in the comments below. If you need guidance on how exactly to tweet your prayers, you’re advised to take a look at this video.

Yours with love from the Holy Land,

Alon

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).

Shalom all,

I thought I’d give you another update on what going on with @TheKotel. You might want to read this update from a couple of days ago, because this blog post just builds on it.

First off – I’d like to once again apologize for not following-back everyone right away. Got about 2,500 new followers in the past couple of days (not that I’m complaining though ) and since this operation is manual, by just me, it takes a while to deal with all the requests but I’m getting there. Yesterday I followed-back approximately 400 people, and today I intend to keep at it. Last time I followed so many people all at once (around the end of July) – Twitter actually blocked me for a couple of days from following any other users. Hang in there – eventually I’ll follow all of you back, and deal with all your prayers. As I said in that last post - I’ve proven I’m a man of my word in the past.

Second - I got an important phone call today from the secretary of a man of great importance in Jerusalem that might really help this project. This means I’ll head to Jerusalem the coming week, or the one after that at most. It’s likely that I’ll take all of your prayers with me that time.

Finally - at the end of the day, keep in mind that I’m just a 25 year old student. I’m a regular person, so yes – the media interest flatters me to some extent. I just discovered I was on Romanian TV, and also got a link to this coverage on CNet (roughly 3 and a half minutes into the clip). I’d appreciate it if you could send me newspaper articles and TV stories I’m featured in. Surely you can understand.

Send me those stories to tweetyourprayers@gmail.com . Thank you!

Thanks a lot to all those who help or just send me a supporting email. I really appreciate that and it energizes me to keep going!

All the best from the Holy Land,

Alon!

Shalom everyone,

As you probably know, this project has received a lot of media attention yesterday and today.  Reuters, FOX News, NBC New-York and Chicago, to name just a few. Many other places wrote or talked about it too. (By the way – if you’ve a story about his project on a real newspaper or on TV – please contact me, I’d love to know about it).

The media coverage brought a lot of new followers. Roughly 2,000 to be precise. And if you don’t know yet, this whole project is operated by me, a young student sitting in a room in Tel-Aviv. You can say I’m a bit overwhelmed with work . Just think what it’s like to manually process 2,000 new people on Twitter (not to mention the thousands I already had before).

I’m asking for your patience.

Rest assured, I intend to give service to all. And I’ve proven myself in the past. On July 23rd, this project was featured in many places (New-York times, CNN, FOX, ABC, CBS, etc.) and I was overwhelmed with prayers pouring in back than. I’m proud to say that even though it took me a little while, all prayers were processed and stashed in the Western Wall. You can see for yourselves in the Reuters video. (sorry, couldn’t embed the video here).

Also, if you can offer any help – please contact me. This project needs any help it can get. I can’t keep going unsupported for long. It’s just how things are. Also, please read the Help Us page, and see if you can help or forward it to someone who can.

Thanks everyone,

I’ll keep working and updating you on what’s going on.