(29 Mar 2009)
1. Wide of Western Wall
2. Men praying at wall
3. Close up of hands and notes
4. Tilt down of notes pushed into cracks in wall
5. Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz clearing notes
6. Close up of notes
7. Close up of Rabinowitz
8. Notes being put into bag
9. SOUNDBITE: (Hebrew) Shmuel Rabinowitz, Rabbi:
"It's the removal of the notes, their burial in the Mount of Olives and a chance to put in new notes. There are millions of notes here."
10. Medium of Rabinowitz with person sweeping
11. Close up of notes being swept up
12. SOUNDBITE: (English) Yacek Kash, Polish tourist:
"This is a symbolic act of physical expressing our thoughts, and our thoughts are known to God anyway so I don't have a problem with paper being taken out."
13. Close up of hands putting note in wall
14. Mid shot of Kash
15. Notes being swept away
16. Notes being put in wall, pull out to notes being fished out
17. SOUNDBITE: (English) Zvi Hersh, visitor to Western Wall:
"In certain places there's, if you look closely, there is no place for, for example, there's no place for any more messages. There's thousands, hundreds of thousands of tourists that come every year and the messages have got to go somewhere so I don't see it's a problem at all."
18. Pan from tourists taking photos to wall
STORYLINE:
A senior Jewish rabbi and his helpers removed thousands of handwritten notes on Sunday placed into crevices between the ancient stones of the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem.
The notes were placed there by visitors who believe their requests will find a shortcut to God by being deposited at Judaism's holiest site.
But Rabbi Shmuel said the older notes need to be removed to make way for new ones to be placed on the wall.
"It's the removal of the notes, their burial in the Mount of Olives and a chance to put in new notes. There are millions of notes here," he said.
The operation is carried out twice each year: before the Passover festival, which begins this year on 9 April, and at the Jewish New Year in Autumn.
Visitors to the wall who had placed notes into its crevices said the practice gave others a chance to put their wishes into the wall, without having to dig for space.
"There's thousands, hundreds of thousands of tourists who come every year and the messages have got to go somewhere so I don't see it's a problem at all," said Zvi Hersh, a visitor to the wall.
The Western Wall was part of the retaining wall of the Temple Mount, where the temples stood in the days of the Bible.
Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz said the notes will be buried on the Mount of Olives, just across a valley from the Old City.
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