This week, we observe the 17th of Tammuz, beginning the season that commemorates the destruction of the Temple and culminates on the Ninth of Av, which this year will be observed August 10. For many of us, however, the Temple and its remaining Western Wall (the kotel) often evoke more ambivalence than they do wistful remembrance.
It’s obvious why many contemporary Jews don’t miss the Temple, with its animal sacrifices and priestly hierarchies. But let’s face it, Jews like me don’t like the kotel either. Expats living in Israel see it as a tourist trap; rationalists find the adoration of a physical object un-Jewish, even idolatrous; mystics see it as a distraction (isn’t God supposed to be everywhere?); secularists see it as the object of irrational devotion, and liberals see it as sexist and Haredi-centric. So, as a liberal, expatriate intellectual scholar-mystic myself, I shouldn’t like the kotel, let alone love it.
But I do, and I want to reclaim it as my own.
First and foremost, for me, the kotel is an energy center, a vortex of holiness. Perhaps this is due simply to its being the object of so much devotion. Perhaps, as a cynic would say, it’s all in my head. But it’s in millions of other heads, too, and, I think for that reason, the wall seems to radiate what many Africans call baraka (the same root as bracha and Barack) and many Polynesians call mana: some indefinable power that seems to reside in some physical objects more than in others. There’s an almost palpable holiness to the ancient stones, the birds circling, the expanse of the sky that the wall seems to frame.
To speak of the kotel in this way may well strike some as idolatrous (like the concepts of baraka and mana themselves). But such fears are part of an overly Diasporic Judaism, one afraid of the sanctification of any object or place. The fact is that pre-destruction Judaism did venerate this place, and post-destruction mystical tradition has long held that the shekhina, the Divine Presence, never left the Western Wall. If that’s not our version of mana, I don’t know what is.
I experience this energy when I enter the kotel plaza, whether for a state ceremony or a private pilgrimage: There is something in the air. And I’m not alone; even the tourists who gab and snap pictures usually display some reverence for the holy site, perhaps feeling a little of the holiness despite themselves. But of course, the kotel’s magic is most clearly felt by those thousands of devotees who cram kotel’s cracks with supplications, who kiss and caress and cry upon it. Say what you will about these Jews’ theologies; the sincerity of their emotion dwarfs anything I see in the mainstream of American Jewry.
Isn’t this why we send our young people to Israel — to get a taste of this energy for themselves? I say, leave doubt, rationalism and ambivalence for politics, where they could all do us some good. For religion, I’ll take devotion.
The second reason I love the kotel is that it is, for me, a cathedral of the ordinary. Somehow, against the backdrop of this ancient ruin, the ordinary exchanges of ordinary people seem sacred. For some, the trivialities of daily life must seem dwarfed by the magnitude of the kotel’s history and significance. But not for me. I love to sit toward the back of the kotel plaza and watch young girls playing games; Hasidic men on cell phones; tourists making silly, awkward comments. I love the way the kotel is able to hold the grandiose and the simple with the same timeless impassivity. It is, in such moments, the quintessential Jewish shrine: an altar of the everyday.
This is what Yehuda Amichai meant, of course, in his poem “Tourists”: that we might see a woman carrying food for her family as more important than some Roman arch. The chitchat isn’t a distraction from the holiness; the chitchat is the holiness.
When I see in this way, something happens to my normally judgmental mind. Yes, the Birthright kids are still impossibly naive, and the schnorrers shaking their coin-filled palms in my face are insufferable. But somehow, the whole scene seems like a comedy, a symphony and a prayer all wrapped up into one. Here we are, disparate tribes of exiles and strivers, and we’re doing this kotel thing together, whatever it is. Under its awning, we gather for a moment and then disburse. God seems to laugh along with us, and cry, too.
This embrace is the third thing I love about the kotel: that it includes so much. What other shrine is both national symbol, used for military ceremonies, and private shrine, holding the tear-soaked prayers of so many? What other object is a symbol both of destruction and victory, of tears and of hope? The kotel is like Judaism at its best: polysemous and pluralistic, tragic and heroic. It was, after all, built by the Romans and later intended to be dwarfed by the Dome of the Rock. Until 1967, it was part of a Jerusalem slum. Today it is both triumphalist and tempered by its status as a ruin. It’s like the wedding and the shattering of the glass, together.
I know that the kotel also excludes, and I am not blind either to the sexism of the mechitza or to the politics of that other Israeli wall that’s visible off in the distance. I stand with Women of the Wall, and sometimes wear my rainbow yarmulke when I go there to daven. I wish there were a way that more Jews and Muslims could see the prayers of the other as different versions of the same text rather than as competing and mutually exclusive narratives. I know that when I pray at the kotel, I have very different ideas in my head than many of my fellow Jews have in theirs. And I cringe at how Jews in black hats are photographed as “real” Jews, while those of us in jeans are cropped out.
So, I do understand the critiques. But I’m not willing to let either conservatives or liberals steal my people’s most sacred space from me. If progressives let the fundamentalists capture all the spiritual treasures of our tradition, we’ll be left with nothing but the dregs. And we’ll continue to lose the demographic battle, because we’ll be left with less to inspire us. Progressive Jews are like that Hasid in the famous story — unaware of the great treasure that’s lying right in his home. Only it’s not that we’re unaware of it; we’re suspicious of it.
But maybe the kotel could become a model for Jewish religiosity in general. It’s got a questionable pedigree, it means different things to different people and it means particularly odious things to some people. Just like much of Judaism. But it is a treasure nonetheless, if we dare to embrace it — ambivalence in tow, but not necessarily in front.
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Mr Michaelson - I was quite surprised to read in your article that the kotel was built by the Romans. The kotel, together with the whole Second Temple complex, was a building project of King Herod. It was built by Judeans (in Hebrew, "Judeans" and "Jews" are the exact same word - "yehudim"). Now, it's true that the Land of Israel was under the rule of the Roman Empire - but the initiative and the financing of the project were Herod's. Herod, despite rumors that one hears all the time, was a Jewish king (descended from the Edomites or Idumeans that had been converted to Judaism a few generations before at the time of Hycanus I) - and his rise to eminence was partly due to his marriage to Miriam, the granddaughter of the high priest Hycanus II (who was also king of Judea from the Hasmonean dynasty). Herod once tried to marry his sister off to the Nabatean king (in the Negev area) for his political ambitions - but since the Nabatean king refused to have a brit-mila, the marriage was called off. In short, Herod was a Jewish monarch, and the kotel was his project.
Hey Jay: I don't know where you've been, but I don't know how you could have celebrated the 17th of Tammuz last week, when today is the 15th of Tammuz and the fast of the 17th of Tammuz will actually be observed this coming Sunday - July 20th. Regards - Daniel
Good article. There is nothing like Friday night at the Kotel. The air is electric. Tow years ago I was in Israel for Shavous. Daveing with over 25,000+ other Jews is special. Where else do you find a place where anyone can get a Shabbos meal.
In your July 17 article you began: Last week, we celebrated the 17th of Tammuz... Actually, 17 Tammuz this year is July 20. And it is not celebrated, surely; it is observed. (My sister died on that date four years ago; since then I've become well acquainted with its Jewish historic and religious significance.) I am a non-observant, atheist Jew, but I'm offended by the insensitivity in your choice of words. That said, I'd like to mention that as the descendent of two grandfathers who used to "read the Forward religiously" (in the words of my parents), I'm thrilled to have discovered this website today and plan to read it regularly. And the rest of the article is lovely.
As a liberal and reform Jew, I didn't realize that the Western Wall needed defending.
Curiously, I have had exactly the same thoughts about a "holiness vortex" in Jerusalem. How strange that the rock on which Abraham is said to have made Isaac ready for sacrifice is the very same rock where Mohammed is said to have ascended to heaven. That rock is none other than the Dome of the Rock rock. Then there is Jesus, of course, and the kotel - the area practically radiates religion and, presumably, holiness to those who perceive these things. Personally, I have never "experience[d] the energy," having arrived at the vortex conclusion through speculation. But the bizarre coincidences give much food for thought.
It's not a coincidence at all that the Jewish tradition of the 'aqedah (the binding of Isaac) and the Islamic tradition of the mir'aj (Muhammad's ascent to heaven) occurred at the very same place. With the spread of Islam in the seventh century, the new religion saw itself as inheriting the holiness of the preceding ones. Jerusalem became important to Islam because it was so important to Judaism. The first direction of prayer (al-qibla al-ula) in Islam was to Jerusalem because of Judaism (Muhammad thought that Jews would be converted to the new religion). The city of Jerusalem itself was originally called in Arabic "bayt muqaddas". Now, this term has meaning in Arabic ("holy house), but it sounds just like the Hebrew "beit miqdash" (the Temple). This, too, is not a coincidence. The Arabs had heard from the Jews about their "beit miqdash" as the home of God. By the way, the holiness of Jerusalem to Christianity is also not a coincidence. Jesus had come to the Temple in Jerusalem for Pesach, and therefore was arrested there. So, historically, in both cases (Christianity and Islam) Jerusalem has become a holy city because of the ancient Temple - not by coincidence.
"So, I do understand the critiques. But I’m not willing to let either conservatives or liberals steal my people’s most sacred space from me." Except that, because I'm a woman, it's already been stolen from me. When I walked up to the sliver of space that was marked off for me, I did so with the very pervasive sense that I was being reluctantly tolerated in a space that someone else had claimed. I can't give myself up to an experience in that sort of atmosphere - and, thus, I don't think I'll ever really feel the type of energy you're describing.
I think that Jay has summed up the specialness of the Kotel. It certainly does have a "mystical" - as he explains it - attraction. I don't have his problems with the gender split and as a result often experience a form of "ecuminism" which he misses out on across the mehitzah. If you're there when a group of men wish to daven and they're short of a minyan, you can find yourself joined up with strangest combination of people - black coated haredim, modern orthodox, and sundry tourists like me - all equally necessary for the quorum.
None of my 38 visits to Israel, over the last 37 years has ever been complete without a visit to the Kotel. As a dedicated Zionist and a religiously secular Jew, Ha Kotel represents for me a symbol of the past, a remnant of the Temple that was the central point of Jewish life in a Jewish community and country three thousand years ago. It symbolizes for me the strength of our people who have survived and now thrive in our Homeland.
Yasher Koach! My feelings, precisely. Whenever I have been in Jerusalem, I have been drawn to the kotel (every day that I was there) -some times to pray - some times to observe - and each time I went away revitalized. The size, the history, the myriad activities taking place on the plaza at all times of the day and night - it is awesome to be a part of it.