Leader—For our Majesty that is departed.
Response—We sit in solitude and mourn.
Leader—For the walls that are destroyed.
Response—We sit in solitude and mourn.
Leader—For our great men who lie dead.
Response—We sit in solitude and mourn.
Leader—For our priests who have stumbled.
Response—We sit in solitude and mourn.
The effect of this chant cannot be appreciated unless you hear it. The old men, the weeping women who kiss the stones of the wall that separates them from what was once the site of Solomon’s Temple, and that is even now the holiest spot on the earth to the Jew, the genuine feeling expressed by all and the faith they show in thus coming here week after week and year after year, are most wonderfully impressive. It is indeed one of the strange sights of this strangest of cities. A nation is mourned for.
