Editing Western Wall (section)

====17th century====
In 1625, David Finzi reported to the Jewish leadership of [[Carpi, Emilia-Romagna|Carpi]] that:<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Benayahu |first=Meir |date=1987 |title=ספור דברים מורגלים בירושלים |journal=Asuppot |volume=1 |pages=215–242 |via=Otzar}}</ref><blockquote>. . . from there we went up to the Temple Mount, passing mundane structures until we reached the peak of the Mount, where once the Temple stood, which was destroyed for our sins. Now a mosque is built upon it, and Jews are prohibited from entering it; only outside it, near the Western Wall, are Jews allowed to gather, and even this only in peaceful times—in difficult times, such as these, the Jewish community has decreed that no one go there.

But in the first week of our visit, before this decree, we went all the way in, and kissed it, and I prostrated myself before its base, and there I said the ordered prayers, and also entreated God to bless all the Jews of Carpi ... Though it is called the Western Wall, nothing of the Temple whatever survived the destruction, the looting by thieves, and the construction of the mosque. They built a [[Dome of the Rock|citadel]] on the site of the [[Foundation Stone]], surpassingly lovely ...</blockquote>Tensions eventually calmed again. Gedaliah of [[Siemiatycze]], who lived in Jerusalem from 1700 to 1706, records that:<ref name=":1" /><blockquote>Only Muslims are permitted to enter the Mount and not Jews or other peoples, unless they convert to the Muslim faith. They say that not just any faith is worthy of the Mount, and they continually remind us that the Muslims have superseded the Jews in the eyes of God. When we go to pray at the Wall, we press right up against it, like the lover in [[Song of Songs]] who "standeth behind our wall". On the [[Rosh Chodesh|eve of the New Moon]], on [[Tisha B'Av|Tisha ba'Av]], and on other [[Ta'anit|fast days]], we go there to pray, and the women to raise their plangent cries, but no one challenges us, and even the ''qadi'' who lives there does not object. Though the Arab youths sometimes come to prey on us, they are easily bribed to leave us alone, and if caught by their own elders they are rebuked ... Prayer by the Wall usually meets with God's favor ... . Once in olden times, or so I heard, there was a terrible drought. The Jews declared a day of fasting, and they went with a Torah scroll to the Western Wall to pray, and God answered their prayers so readily that they had to wrap the scroll in their clothes on their return to the synagogue. Every Sabbath morning, after the services at the synagogue, we immediately set off for the Western Wall ... every single one of us, [[Ashkenazi Jews|Ashkenazic]] and [[Sephardic Jews|Sephardic]], old and young ... there we recite those Psalms that mention Jerusalem, and ''Pitom haQtores'', and ''[[Aleinu|Aleinu l'Shabeach]]'', and the [[Kaddish]], and we bless those in the diaspora who fundraise for [[Land of Israel|Eretz Yisrael]] ... .</blockquote>