The Wall In Our
Hearts
Reflections on Tisha
B’Av 5773
July 16, 2013
By Rabbi Boaz D.
Heilman
Few symbols are as potent as the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
Left standing after the Romans destroyed the rest of
Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple in the year 70 CE, the wall, part of the
external fortifications that surrounded the Temple, has withstood the rise and
fall of empires and conquerors.
The Western Wall—Ha-Kotel
as it is called in Hebrew—is a place of wonder.
For centuries it was called the Wailing Wall. Its stones have been smoothed by the touch of
human hands caressing it, lips kissing it, eyes shedding tears on it. It has heard the murmured prayers of
countless pilgrims who came to beseech and plead for both personal and national
redemption. Countless scraps of paper
containing personal petitions have been stuffed into crevices between its
massive stones.
For Jews, the Wall represents the holiest of all places on
this world. It is, after all, the sole
remnant of the Holy Temple first built by King Solomon in the 10th
century BCE. Destroyed by the
Babylonians in 586 BCE, it was rebuilt some 70 years later. During the thousand years of its existence,
the Temple was the focus of Jewish ritual.
Sacrifices could only be offered there, under the strict supervision of
the Kohanim—the Levitical priests—and
the High Priest, descendant of Aaron, brother of Moses.
When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, they left the Western
Wall as a reminder of the fate that would befall the Judeans should they
attempt any further revolt. At the same
time, the Romans minted a coin called Judaea Captiva. They boasted—prematurely, it turns out—of the
final annihilation of the Jewish People and their Holy Land.
For two thousand years, the Kotel stood as a sign of Israel’s defeat for all our enemies. They gloated as they pointed to it,
testimony, they claimed, of God’s rejection of His chosen people.
For us Jews, however, the Kotel remained a sign of unwavering hope. “Next year in Jerusalem,” we sang at the
Passover seder year after year. Risking fortunes and lives, poets,
philosophers and various people of all stations of life made the pilgrimage to
cement their lot with that of the Kotel’s
stones.
Some of the bitterest tears were shed in 1948, when the
Jordanian army expelled Jews from the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of
Jerusalem and forbade them access to the holy sites.
In 1967, however, Jerusalem was liberated by the Israel
Defense Forces, and since then, a united city has proudly thrived under the
blue and white colors of Israel’s flag.
Through the many changes that took place around the Kotel, its stones remained silent,
almost impervious. That is the nature of
symbols. They don’t change; the design,
the shape and even the colors remain the same.
Today, after all that it has seen and witnessed, the Wall remains
apart from any other structure worldwide.
For some, it is still a symbol of all that is forever changed and
gone. For others, however, it is a
symbol of what might yet be.
Today, Tisha B’Av—the day commemorating the destruction of
the two Temples, a day historically reserved for national mourning—the Kotel is scene of many cultures coming
together. Thousands have been gathering
at the site to bewail the terrible destruction; others, however, have come to
celebrate its promise of renewal. The
sound of wailing and lamentation conflicts with the blaring calls of shofars
that, for the hopeful, herald the imminent arrival of the Messiah.
There is no stronger power than that of faith. Belief can hurt and destroy. At the same time, however, faith can heal,
restore and rebuild.
That, above all, is what the Kotel represents to me at this moment.
It is a physical barrier, dividing between many
cultures. The Jewish culture is on one
side, the Moslem culture on the other. There
are those who, looking at its massive stones, see the past and bewail the
destruction; and there are those whose perception penetrates into the almost
human, and perhaps Divine, heart of the stone and see far into the future.
Perhaps the stones aren’t silent after all. Perhaps, to the attentive soul, they still
reverberate, echoing the prayers and petitions of millions of human souls
longing for solace and consolation.
Maybe the songs of praise and rejoicing come from somewhere far beyond
the huge blocks of Jerusalem rock, from a place where past and future unite.
For thousands of years, the Kotel has been witness to time and events. It has always served as a reminder of hatred
and violence, of loss and separation. It
is all that, yes. History cannot be
denied.
Somehow, however, I can’t help believing that, though left
as a ruin, it may yet also turn out to be something else—the foundation stone
for a great bridge, one that will unite people and restore harmony and peace
for the whole world.
On this day of national mourning, I am saddened to the
depths of my soul by the suffering of the Jewish People—indeed by the suffering
of all who have been oppressed because of their faith, gender, sexual
orientation, physical and psychological challenges, or color of their
skin. But I also rejoice with the certainty
that, despite all, we still have the ability to heal and create—the very image
of God—embedded within us.
And today I pray that the powers of compassion and love, which
unite us all as God’s children, overcome all the power of hatred that exists in
this world, now and forever more.
Kein y’hi ratzon,
may this be God’s will.
© 2013 by Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
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