Shalom everyone!

Please watch this video blog, in which I detail how to bring The Kotel to the sick:

So, if you think it’s a good idea, and would like to take part, contact me.

Here are some photos from the event at Tel-Hashomer Hospital. To respect their privacy, I did not include many of the photos, which showed the sick children’s faces. Please understand.

(Click on any photo to enlarge. You can also click on a photo and slide to the next by clicking on it’s right side).

Some of the above photos were taken by Star Rajuan. Thanks star .

Let me know what you think of my idea.

Best regards from the Holy Land!

Your friend,

Alon

Related posts:

1. Panoramic view of a beach in Haifa
2. The Kotel in 1870
3. Blessings Upon Your Prayers

Shalom everyone!

Last Thursday’s trip to Jerusalem was one of the most fun I’ve had. There was such a festive atmosphere there, with many Bar-Mitzvah celebrations, and no one could stay nonchalant.
Here are a few pictures from last week’s ride to Jerusalem. Many beautiful pictures from Jerusalem will be added to the Gallery section soon!

Click on any photo to enlarge.

First thing’s first – arriving to the right place!

Taking your prayers to the Kotel itself:

…and making sure the Kippa (Yarmulke ) sits securely on my head:

Looking for my special niche in the Western Wall…

…and finally getting set up:

many minutes and many prayers later that day…

More pictures to come!

If you can, please consider helping out by making a donation:

Best regards from the Holy Land!

Related posts:

1. Pictures from the Kotel – Placing the Prayers
2. Pictures from the Western Wall
3. VIDEO – Placing your prayers!

On October 2nd I went to Jerusalem with a big box full of prayers. 3,812 of your prayers were placed in the Western-Wall that day. Since there were so many prayers to carry and place, I had my childhood friend Dan accompany me in the trip. Below are just some of the many pictures we took that day. I have more touching pictures (and videos!) I’ll share with you soon.

Click on a picture to enlarge:

Dan knows where”s the final destination:

Time to place some prayers:

We ran out of places to put the prayers so Dan, who is taller than I am (ex-basketball player), helped putting remaining prayers deep inside the crevice:

And eventually (it took so long!):

Inside the wall it looked like a river of blue prayers!

Please support this service and help keep it operational by making a donation with PayPal:

Mission accomplished, we can go!

Related posts:

1. One Kotel, Many Prayers (Pictures)
2. VIDEO – Placing your prayers!
3. Pictures from the Western Wall

Shalom all,

Several people who saw the video reports on TweetYourPrayers asked me about the shirt I was wearing. This is the best close-up photo I have from wearing it in Jerusalem: (click to enlarge)

Here’s a higher quality depiction of the logo:

Well, this nifty Kotel Team logo shows the famous blue jay associated with Twitter, carrying a prayer to the Western Wall. I like it, I like the ingenuity and how it aptly describes the service.

A few weeks ago I tweeted that I’m looking for someone to design a logo to this operation. Several people offered their help (thank you Chana and Emily for all your hard work!) and eventually this design was chosen.

The logo was designed by a nice talented (and patient) guy named Dave Stark. I had him working hard tweaking the design again and again, and he was always happy to help. After I have finished tormenting him with “some minor changes”, we got into getting to know each other better. Turns out that despite his obvious talent, Dave finds himself – like many other talented people in this economy – out of work.

Even though he didn’t ask for any credit or mentioning, I ceased the opportunity of explaining about the shirt to give him the proper thank you he deserves. So thank you Dave!

You can check out more of his work here and contact him here.

I’ll start uploading pictures from the trips to Jerusalem. I’ll start off with this amusing picture. It has caught me by surprise that the Kotel has WiFi (unfortuantely.. it’s password protected!)

Still, how cool is that!

Related posts:

1. Bad picture, beautiful sign
2. GPS Fail
3. One Kotel, Many Prayers (Pictures)

Not even 2 weeks have gone by since @TheKotel was launched. There’s still much work to be done, including many improvements to the site and of course – reaching the masses and making the service more widespread.

Though the service hasn’t been operating for long,  I have already received a few dozen prayers. It feels good to give people this service, and I’ll be honest – it gives me some satisfaction. What’s more, I’ve been contacted by some very interesting people, with interesting stories and goals, and it’s those people who inspire me to keep going, though I spend too many hours a day working on this project.

I wanted to share with you the stories of these people, so I started writing this blog. Hope you find the blog interesting and inspirational.

The first person I’d like to introduce is Wyman Brent (@jewishlibrary). He is a remarkable person, and though he is what we might affectionately call a “goy”, he is fascinated with Jewish culture. He went all the way from San-Diego to Vilnius, Lithuania with a very ambitious goal in mind: to restore the city’s rich Jewish culture that was wiped out during WWII. Why is he doing it? He revealed his motives  in an interview to The Baltic Times:

“I’m fascinated with Jewish culture. I fell in love with Lithuania when I went there the first time in 1994. So it was kind of like, I love libraries, I love Jewish culture and I love Lithuania, so let me put this all together into this Jewish library.”

He aims to open a public library with 100k books in English about the Jewish culture, hoping to once again make Vilnius “The Jerusalem of the North”.
As one could expect, he needs help achieving this noble goal. He wrote me an email with details:

What I would most like is for readers especially in Israel or the US to gather books, CDs, and DVDs for the library.  The best is if say someone in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem had a central storage area where people could send material.  Then after a certain amount of items were gathered, then someone could send them to Vilna.  It is always less expensive per item if everything is shipped at once.  I would love to see someone do the same in New York City.

The last two lines of that email enchanted me even further:

The only way that the library can grow is by people everywhere helping out.  I am only one man and I am as rich as Tevye.  It took thousands and thousands of people to destroy Jewish culture in Lithuania.  It will take more than just one person to restore the culture which was lost.

Please contact him on Twitter or email and see how you can help.

For more information about Brent and his undertaking I recommend reading The Baltic Times article (link) and also an article on The Jewish Press (link). There’s a lot more material on the Vilnius Jewish Library blog (link).

So far for the first blog post. Next time – how one young lady from NY is using Twitter to fight for Gilad Shalit.

Related posts:

1. What does the Western-Wall (the Kotel) mean to you?
2. Media Coverage
3. A quick update about @TheKotel