In the Old City

First Davvening at the Kotel
My first experience of the Kotel was Wednesday morning, after having a chance to go the Mikveh. The Kotel is a joyous and awesome place. The davvening there is extraordinary. The size and antiquity of the stones and the Wall itself and the incredible diversity of Jews inspire an “I-can’t-believe-I’m-actually-here” sort of reverence. Davvening together in a minyan is always bonding experience, and there’s something particularly beautiful about the spontaneity and depth of that bonding experience at the Kotel. It just me made want to shout the Hallelukahs at full volume.

However, there was something that struck me afterwards as very peculiar about that scene in the Kotel Plaza, something that didn’t seem quite right. I was told that when standing at the Kotel while davvening, you should face a little bit to the left rather than straight at the wall because we’re supposed to align our bodies, hearts and minds, not to the wall, but to the site of the Holy of Holies that sits under the current site of the big domed mosque. The Wall, after all, is only a retaining wall--it’s what sits inside the wall, the site of the Holy Temple and the Holy of Holies within it that is supposed to be the true target of our prayers.

There are two troubling things about this. The first is a technical issue. There is a technique to effective prayer. Prayer isn’t just a form of self-expression. Real prayer can and should make a difference in the world. We should have the expectation that the world is changed by our prayers, and there are ways to make prayer more effective. Facing the Holy of Holies with our bodies and in our hearts and minds is one of the “tips” for making one’s prayers more effective that unfortunately does not seem commonly practiced in front of the Kotel.

The second issue is political. Among the most moving and significant words to be spoken in 2000 years were the words of Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren when the IDF captured Jerusalem and the Temple Mount in the ’67 war. He said, “Har Habayit B’Yadeinu,” “The Temple Mount is in our hands.” The words were broadcast and recorded over his army walkie-talkie and they reverberated from one end of the world to the other. At last, after 2000 years of longing and suffering, our holiest site, the main link connecting G-d to all creation was back in our control. However, in one of the greatest tragedies of modern times, the Israeli government, within days, had relinquished control over the Temple Mount to the very people who most wanted us and Israel to be dead.

Just imagine that you’ve been forcibly separated from your mother and father for a very long time – 20, 30, or 40 years – and finally after that long long separation you had the opportunity to once again enter and make yourself at home in their house. But rather than coming in the house and embracing your parents, you instead give the house keys to the very people who most recently kicked you out of it. You make a beautiful patio in their front yard, and you satisfy yourself with standing on the patio and waving to your beloved parents through the window.

There’s something simultaneously so sweet and so bitter about being here. Looking on this beautiful scene of the Kotel plaza, I can’t help but feel simultaneously uplifted and downcast. Being here is truly special. There is something very unique and very holy about this place. It feels like every one of these very diverse Jews that run into here is somehow intimately connected to me. The sense of Hashem’s Hashgacha that is the consciousness of being in Eretz Yisrael is nowhere as intense as it is here in the Old City in general and in the Kotel plaza in particular. If I had the opportunity, I’d like to just park myself here for hours and bask in the special energy of the place. At the same time, however, it’s very unsettling and unsatisfying, knowing that the real, in-depth experience of that energy isn’t really here. It’s up on the Temple Mount, which right now is in the hands of people who hate us and who actively attempt to erase our connection to that site.

I think this scene at the Kotel succinctly captures both the glory and the tragedy of the state of Israel. On the one hand, the state has brought us to the courtyard of our home, the destination we have been trying to reach for 2000 years. On the other hand, the state is actively trying to keep us from going past the courtyard and actually entering our home to embrace ourselves and special connection to G-d.



Our Time in Jerusalem
I was hoping to enjoy some of the many wonderful tours and museums here in the Old City, but this was not a popular concept among our four kids. Nisan most enjoyed just walking around the small but intense jigsaw puzzle of streets that comprises the Jewish Quarter. Mendel and Hadassah most enjoyed playing with the many wild cats that live here. I watched them literally for hours as they chased after, petted, and played with these cats. The only breaks in the play with the kitties were to climb a tree or fence or wall. My supervision and sometimes intervention, when the climbing seemed too dangerous, were the only interruptions in their otherwise play filled afternoon. One of the kids’ special treats here was climbing a carob tree growing on one of the trees in a public courtyard and bringing back handfuls of delicious carob pods for us to enjoy.



All the kids enjoyed our long walk to the Machene Yehuda market where we had some great treats and purchased some gifts and some things helpful to our trip. It was quite a crowd scene, not unexpected in these days just prior to Sukkos.

From there we walked to Mea Shearim, to witness the great Arbah Minim markets, to purchase Lulavim and Hadassim (we had already gotten our Esrogim in Chevron) and to be part of the getting-ready-for-Sukkos scene in this largest and most intensely religious Jewish neighborhood in the world.

My Hashgacha Pratis at the Kotel Story
I think everyone who comes here feels something of Hashem’s special hasgacha--special supervision here--especially at the Kotel, and comes home with a story about it. Often it’s meeting someone that they never would have expected to meet up with. My special hashgacha pratis at the Kotel story happened Shabbos/Yom Tov morning. I went to the Kotel to learn some Chassidus and davven, but didn’t bring a sefer with me to learn.

There’s one area of Chassidus that I’ve been particularly interested in related to the creative power within the soil – the Koach Hatzomeach – and the relation between the “Yesh,” the “ego” the sense of beingness that characterizes all physical creation and the ultimate “Yesh” of G-d’s being. It’s not much discussed, and except for a few fleeting references, I had yet to find much elaboration of the concept.

I was disappointed with the selection of Chassidus in the Seforim libray at the Kotel. There was one just volume. It was a volume of the Previous Rebbe’s Mamaarim from the year 1930-31. There was one maamar from Succos in this volume, and virtually the entire maamar was a lengthy and de!tailed explanation of the Koach Hatzomeach and it’s relationship to the temporal and G-dly sense of being and nothingness. What a special gift!

Spirituality at the Kotel
There is a popular notion that spiritual experience is supposed to be either serene and pleasant or wondrous and awesome. However, the experience at the Kotel fell into neither of these categories. At this peak spiritual season, the Kotel is very crowded and requires a bit of jostling, the violation of what we normally consider to be personal space of others and vice versa. There are many minyanim going on simultaneously and in such close proximity. It’s more than a bit chaotic. There’s a branch of mathematics called Chaos theory that is used nowadays to model a huge range of physical, chemical, and biological processes. It seems that nature, like spirituality, is essentially chaotic, at least superficially. The sense of order in both is more than skin deep. If you look at the Kotel Plaza from afar, it does in fact seem like a sort of vibrant organism.