JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A message from God, or just bad plumbing? A wet patch has appeared on the revered Western Wall of Jerusalem's Old City, interpreted by some as a sign the messiah is coming, and others as evidence of a leaky pipe.
Some religious leaders say the holy wall is shedding tears after 21 months of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed.
The Israel Antiquities Authority said it could be a leak but the authority has yet to discuss the patch with Islamic authorities who administer a mosque complex on a broad plaza supported by the wall holy to Judaism.
"Based on past experience we would suggest that this is caused by some physical problem with one of the pipes (on the other side of the wall)," Jon Seligman, an Antiquities Authority archaeologist, said on Thursday.
"It may well dry up this week...We've had bigger wet patches before caused by water pipe bursts," he told Reuters.
The Western Wall is a retaining wall of what Jews revere as the Temple Mount, the last vestige of a temple destroyed in the year 70. Jews have wailed over the lost temple there, ergo its alternative name -- the Wailing Wall.
The entire complex, including the mosques perched on what Muslims call al-Haram al-Sharif, is at the heart of a dispute between Israel and the Palestinians over control of Jerusalem. Each side wants the city as its capital.
The damp spot, about 40 cm (16 inches) long and 10 cm (four inches) wide, appeared this week high up on the stone-block wall. It has stopped dripping but remains damp, and some religious Jews are rejoicing.
They said the moist spot had appeared on a white stone in the seventh row two weeks before the Jewish fast day of Tisha B'Av commemorating the destruction of that temple and its biblical predecessor.
"It is written that if there is a non-stop flow of water from the white stone in the seventh row before Tisha B'Av it is a sign that the messiah will come, that salvation will come to the world," said worshipper Avraham Fryberg.
KABBALISTIC PROPHECY
The black-bearded, ultra-Orthodox Jew said this was written in one of the books of the mystical kabbalah, but others who gathered at the Western Wall disputed his claim.
David Cohen, a Jew of Moroccan origin, said the white stone's only significance was that a Moroccan rabbi called Or Hayyim (Light of Life) had placed a note in a crack there several centuries ago and wrote a book about it.
"A pile of trash deposited by Muslims enabled him to reach the stone" some six metres (18 feet) above ground, Cohen said.
Yehoshua Yamaguchi, a member of a Japanese Christian Zionist group, was sure the stone was shedding tears.
Quoting from a Hebrew song, he sang, "Sometimes a stone can have the heart of a man," and added, "I believe God is present in the stones of this Wall and he is showing his love for the Jewish people who are not all here."
Western Wall rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch offered a similar interpretation.
"Some people see it as the symbol of destruction (of the temple), or that the wall is weeping with us in this difficult time, when children are being killed and we are dealing with hardship, suffering and death," he told Army Radio, referring to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But Shmuel Sheinberg, elderly guardian of a small library next to the wall and someone many said would know about any prophecies, whispered hoarsely: "It's a bluff, its all a bluff. It is not written anywhere".
Tour guide Avraham Pragan offered a mundane explanation. "The seventh row is the level of the floor of Temple Mount. When Muslims above wash down the floor, water will find an outlet at that level if there is any crack in the wall."
The gruff resident of a socialist kibbutz collective farm, Pragan denied he was a born sceptic. "If water were to drip from the eighth row of stones, then I would believe in a miracle."