The Kotel

Final Part of the Jerusalem Series

My clothes felt wrong. They always felt wrong on some level, some last remnant of my middle school insecurities come back to haunt me, but today I had not packed well. I hadn't known where we were going. Over my shorts, pulled down past the knee for decency but still soaked from the water of Hezekiah's Tunnel, I had buttoned a sea green short sleeve shirt to imitate some semblance of formality for the experience I was preparing for. The clothes would have looked in place on a beach, not so at the Western Wall.

We made our way past security and paused just before we rounded the corner to see what we had come so far to see. Hundreds of people were all facing one direction, marveling at some unseen wonder. I edged forwards and caught the first glimpse of the wall, towering and stark white. Solid and heavy. Full of vegetation and life. A man, no bigger than my thumb at my distance, beat his arm against the rough stones of the wall over and over, pouring his passion all over the stones thrice his size.

I walked towards the entrance, the wall looming higher and higher over my head. To my left I saw Akiva talk with the Chasidics mingling around their booth
"Muss Boys!" one of them yelled excitedly, demanding my attention and drawing me towards him. "Come put on t'filin"
I waited, unsure and nervous for one of the men to help me. Then the man pulled me aside and began to wrap the leather tightly around my arm. The box on my arm to touch my heart. The strap thrice above it to form a shin, then winding down my arm, again around my palm to make a dalet, around my middle finger to make a yud, and back to my wrist to tie it off. One of the names of God had been bound to my arm. The final piece was placed on my head, the box between my eyes, the strap falling down my vertebrae, tying my ensemble together.

I wandered on, read the blessings they had given me, and found a space of the indoor portion to contemplate the wall. I produced the paper and pen I had brought and began to write. I wrote about my awe, then I wrote my hopes, my dreams, my aspirations, and my requests. I closed with a simple thank you. Thank You not for delivering these requests, but for helping me find the words to ask.

I folded the note and shoved it into a cranny where I could. I said a short blessing, and I moved on. I explored the exterior part where I ran my hands along the stones. What had from a distance looked rough and textured, was in fact smooth, nearly frictionless, to the point where it felt almost as if the wall had dissipated from beneath my fingers, worn to the bone by thousands of generations running their hands over its surface.

It struck me then, just how many people must have been there, to that very same spot. More than two thousand years, never closed, never one point in that time when it went unaccompanied or lonely. Thousands of years each made of hundreds of days each filled with hundreds upon hundreds of people. A monument to the perpetual dedication of humanity. At that moment, the concept that there could, out of all that emotion and all that time concentrated in one place, be some divine manifestation of faith, made more sense than anything else. God existed in that moment, pure, built by the people who needed him. It moved me. There is nothing more to say.