A Woman at the Western Wall

I was robbed at the Western Wall on Monday. It happened just minutes after I entered the women's section. Although visiting Israel for the first time is itself a sort of pilgrimage, the Wall was always the true pilgrimage destination for me. When I packed for Israel, I placed a number of items in my suitcase that I wanted to bring to the wall. Among them was a photo of my grandmother, Sophia Englander, at the wall in what we think was 1968. In the photo, she is standing with her back to the camera, her right hand pressed flat against the Kotel. I knew I wanted to bring the photo to the Wall with me, and when someone suggested I recreate the picture, 44 years later, it sounded like such an obviously good idea.
Religious pilgrimages offer us the chance to connect, as individuals, with Holiness or History. But they also offer us to connect with the people around us at a Holy site--as though God flows through us in a current that passes from person to person. By connecting with each other, we are able to connect with God. I imagined that when I got to the women's section of the Kotel, I would be able to walk straight up to the Wall. I would show the photo of my grandmother to my new Birthright friends,and I would show the photo to the other women at the wall--women I didn't know, but with whom I would be connected because we stood together in a sacred place full of the history of our shared heritage. We would marvel the significance of standing where we stood--I was retracing the steps of thousands of years' worth of Jews I will never know who came to offer prayers at the wall, but I was also slipping small pieces of paper with my prayers into the same stony cracks that accepted my grandmother's prayers in the 1960s. It would be an awesomely powerful moment.
That's not what happened. The women's section at the Kotel is about 1/3 the size of the men's. Whereas one of the men remarked that they had room to spin in a circle with their arms stretched out, the women were packed nearly shoulder to shoulder, four or five rows deep. I never imagined so much shoving could occur in such a sacred space. My "slicha," or "excuse me," was repeatedly ignored. No one welcomed us to the Wall; no one asked if it was our first time at the Kotel, or in Jerusalem. No one but my Birthright friends wanted to see the photo of my grandmother, let alone hear about her. Surrounded by women praying in fervent, almost silent, whispers over their siddurim, or prayer books, I felt unwelcome in my own home.
On our first evening in Israel, we sat around in a circle and talked about the meanings of Taglit-Birthright Israel's name. Americans are most familiar with the name "Birthright," which stems from the original donors' idea that it is every Jew's right, merely as Jews, to visit the land of Israel at least once in their lives, without concern for cost. "Taglit," which is the more familiar name in Israel, means "discovery." Yoni encouraged us to remember that this trip is a gift, made possible by many, many donors from Israel, the United States, and the rest of the world. To view this gift as an opportunity to discover what Israel means to us personally, as individuals and as members of the Jewish people. To see this gift as a chance to discover what it means, for each of us, to say we are Jewish. And Yoni is 100% correct. Perhaps, as a Jew, it is my "birthright" to visit Israel--but the amazing opportunity to do so nearly free of cost, and with my peers, is more than I could ever expect to be entitled to. It is something for which I can only feel immense gratitude and good fortune.
But on Monday, I was a Jewish woman in Jerusalem. Surely, at the very least, it is my birthright to connect with my God and my people at the Kotel, Judaism's holiest site. And I was robbed of that sacred experience.
I did experience the sacred on Monday, it just wasn't at the Western Wall. Instead, the sacred space was one we created ourselves, before we ever saw the Kotel. More than forty of us stood in a circle around a tree in a courtyard inside the Old City. Yossi asked us what we were thinking as we prepared ourselves, mentally, for the Wall. Moments of silence almost always follow Yossi's most serious questions. Then Brandy shared with us that her father, who is very, very sick at home, was especially excited for her to visit the Kotel--that he had asked her to visit for both of them on this trip. I can only guess how many of us added Brandy's father to our prayers at the wall, but I do hope he felt the energy of so many extra people rooting for him to fight through his illness. As many of us stood there crying with her, and for her, and as we all marveled at her strength to travel so far away when her heart also wanted to be home with her family, I felt something shift in the air around us. Maybe God was in the courtyard then.
Along with the photo of my grandmother, I carried a photo of my dad, asleep on my brother's bed. I don't remember when the photo was taken, but I know it had to be more than ten years ago, because that's when he died from a cancer that was as aggressive as it was rare. He never went to Israel, and he will never get to hear about my experiences in Israel. But through the photo, I hoped to bring him with me on my pilgrimage. I hadn't intended to share this photo with anyone on the trip. But after Brandy's openness, I felt compelled to share it with her. And as I did, someone else pulled out a photo of their grandfather. Whether through photos or memories, I suspect we all brought loved ones with us on this trip. And for many of us, bringing them to the Kotel was especially important. We were making a pilgrimage.
I'm still disappointed that I was disappointed by my time at the Wall. I am still angry that I was robbed of my birthright--a meaningful encounter at such a holy site--by the lack of space and the absence of friendliness from the women who stood, phalanx like, between me and the wall. But I am, perhaps, equally grateful to Brandy for having the courage to share something as private as her father's illness with a group of people she'd met only a few days earlier. There is something sacred in that kind of sharing. There is a sacred connection between all of us who were present to share in that moment. For ten amazing days, I will be in Israel. But at the end of ten days, I will fly back to Chicago. I am a diaspora Jew. Like generations of diaspora Jews before me, I must forge my connection to the Holy by connecting with my community. And perhaps that realization is exactly the kind of "taglit" that's supposed to happen on this trip.