Tens of thousands flock to Western Wall as ex-hostage Eliya Cohen says priestly blessing

For Sigalit Cohen, mother of former hostage Eliya Cohen, attending the Birkat Cohanim (Priestly Blessing) ceremony at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Tuesday felt like coming full circle.

“Twice over the past year, we stood here while Eliya was still trapped in a tunnel,” she told The Times of Israel. “Today, he’s here, reciting the priestly blessing and bestowing it upon the entire people. It’s the most moving experience imaginable. I’ve waited so long for this moment.”

Sigalit spoke to the Times of Israel on the rooftop of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation’s building as Eliya took part in the ceremony in the plaza below, surrounded by a sea of worshippers.

“May God bless you and keep you; may He make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you; may the Lord lift up His face to you and give you peace,” Eliya chanted, standing next to his father Maimon, his voice joining that of hundreds of fellow male descendants of the ancient priestly line.

Wrapped in white prayer shawls, the Cohanim (priests in Hebrew) blessed the people of Israel with the same words God commanded the first priests to use according to the Bible (Numbers, 6:22–26).

According to Jewish tradition, the priesthood was granted by God to Moses’ brother Aaron and his sons after the Exodus from Egypt. To this day, thousands of Jewish families across the world are believed to be their descendants, and the men are invited to recite the priestly blessing as part of the liturgy for holidays or Shabbat prayers. Often, their family names hint at this heritage.

Before the Hamas onslaught on October 7, 2023, Sigalit said, her family rarely joined the collective ceremony at the Western Wall, which was introduced in the 1970s and has become a beloved tradition of the holidays of Passover and Sukkot.

“We felt deeply connected to it, but since it was always very crowded, it was difficult for us to attend,” Sigalit recalled. “Since Eliya was kidnapped, we felt the need to be closer to the schina [divine presence] and the Western Wall.”

In 2024, the Cohens attended the ceremony both on Sukkot and on Passover.

“We prayed that Eliya could come here himself to recite the priestly blessing,” Sigalit said. “Now that he is here, like a child who was born again, we hope that this prayer will go up to heaven and help the rest of the hostages come home.”

A total of 59 hostages are still in Gaza, 24 of whom are believed by Israeli authorities to be alive. Eliya was freed under the latest hostage deal in February after 505 days of captivity.

During the prayers, the young man held up posters for two hostages still in the Strip, Segev Kalfon and Alon Ohel. Some of Kalfon’s family members also attended the ceremony at the Western Wall, together with family members of Uriel Baruch, who was kidnapped and killed and whose body is still held in Gaza.

Like Cohen, Kalfon, Ohel, and Baruch were kidnapped from the Supernova music festival.

Ohel and Cohen were taken from the same bomb shelter and spent long parts of their captivity together.

According to Sigalit, while Eliya was not maintaining a religious lifestyle when he was taken to Gaza, “faith gave him strength in the tunnels.”

“Eliya witnessed many miracles and understood that someone was guarding and protecting him from above,” she said.

Now, the woman said that all the remaining hostages in Gaza must also come home.

“Let’s hope that thanks to all these prayers, there will be a breakthrough to bring them back,” she said. “Everyone needs to know that the return of the hostages must be the priority.”

Asked whether the hostages should be brought home even at the price of halting the war, as many among the public have been demanding, Sigalit said that she did not know what was the right thing to do.

“Managing this is not my job; it is the government’s job,” she said.

A ceremony in high demand

According to the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, the organization that manages the Western Wall and organizes the Passover Priestly Blessing, tens of thousands of people attended the event, as well as several public officials, including Chief Rabbis David Yosef and Kalman Ber and Public Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

The ceremony included the Shacharit morning prayer and the musaf prayer (an additional prayer for Shabbat and Jewish festivals), as well as a prayer for the return of the hostages.

In the middle of the crowd, several colorful umbrellas with elaborate decorations offered shade to a large group of Jews of Ethiopian descent, some of them wearing traditional white garments and tall round hats.

“This is a very special tradition for our community,” Sara Baleta, who made Aliyah from Ethiopia in 1993, told The Times of Israel.

Ahead of Passover, the Western Wall Foundation announced that due to high demand from the public, an additional Priestly Blessing event will also be held on Thursday morning.

After the ceremony ended, many started to slowly make their way out of the Western Wall Plaza. Some families stopped for group pictures or an improvised picnic, with parents feeding babies and giving out snacks to older children.

Other people continued to flock to the Wall for their personal visits or prayers.

“It was a powerful morning,” Josh Aronowitz told The Times of Israel.

Aronowitz traveled to Israel from Philadelphia with his wife and five children to celebrate Passover. They came to the Western Wall also with his sister-in-law and her five children.

“We were here during the festival Sukkot right before October 7, and at that time, it was hard for us to reach the Western Wall as we were walking around with a double stroller,” he recalled. “This time, we managed to be inside [the praying area] with our children, we wrote notes to insert in the stones and now we are going to give charity. It has been very meaningful.”

For Aronowitz, this is his first trip to Israel after the Hamas attack. While he and his wife had some security concerns, he said they had not experienced any negative issues.

“We are all just very excited to be here,” he said.

For the family, it was very important to participate in the prayer for the return of the hostages, he added.

“It is one of the reasons we came today,” Aronowitz said. “In America, we hear this prayer in our synagogue, but hearing it here was incredibly moving.”