Shehecheyanu

I’m not a mystical person, but I definitely expected my entrance into Jerusalem to be moving. If I cry watching commercials, shouldn’t I cry as I enter one of the world’s most ancient—and yet still vibrant—cities, the holiest place of several major world religions, including the religion of my childhood and the religion not only of my present and future but of my future life’s work and calling?

We got off the plane in Tel Aviv at 5:30 in the morning. No one sang when the plane landed. Waiting in line to pass through customs, pushing our way into a shared-ride taxi to Jerusalem, and chatting with the young Orthodox woman next to me (37 years old, 11 children, and a very narrow idea of how one can, must, be Jewish) didn’t exactly stir my soul.

And then it was several days of climate problems: dehydration, loss of appetite, resulting hunger. I felt uncomfortable and out of place. My physical sensations led me to think I shouldn’t be here, I don’t belong, I am not ready for this.

I drank more bottles of water than I can count. I started to feel better. I put up some familiar objects in my new bedroom. I ate. I explored the shuk (outdoor market) in the safety of a group of students and our very able interns. Things started to look up. Shabbat services at Hebrew Union College and an engaging lecture by Dean Rabbi Michael Marmer and President Rabbi David Ellenson reminded me why I am here, and the amazing privilege I have to be studying here, with these people and at this instution.

But today was the first day I felt moved to really pray in thanksgiving and awe—and I mean that in the literal sense of the word—at being here, at this time, in this place: Jerusalem, 2008, nearly a year from my (adult) bat mitzvah and just four years after taking the Torah scroll in my arms and receiving my Hebrew name.

I stood at the Western Wall, surrounded by women, divided from the men by a barrier (mechitza) I thought would dominate my thoughts and interrupt my experience. The plaza is broad and expansive, with smooth light stones. The sun beat down on us, still hot at 4:30 in the afternoon. A few bookshelves lined with prayerbooks stood at the edges; some women sat in chairs, praying quietly near the wall or waiting for friends and family.

Many women approached the wall with fervor, davening (praying) with the traditional swaying motion or pressing their foreheads to the warm stones. Others backed away from the wall when they were finished, refusing to turn their faces on the Presence, the manifestation of God that some believe exists here.

As I approached the pocked stones, I was not overcome by a wave of mystical emotion. I didn’t have any visions. I’m not sure I even felt what these other women sensed as the Presence.

But I was stirred.

Here, between stones rubbed by countless hands for thousands of years, the sincerest prayers were deposited, written on scraps of paper, folded or rolled and tucked carefully into the cracks between the stones. This place marks an interface between the human and the Divine. Some of the prayers may be mundane, but whatever their content, I saw them today as the hopefullness of humans, the potential for religion to act not as a mechitza but as a way to relate: to one another and to the divine. The wall motivates a literal and a spiritual reaching out, as pilgrims hold out their arms to the stones, contemplate their own lives and histories, or pray in the words of their traditions.

I put my hands to the stones, thinking about all the others who had been here before me, praying in thanksgiving or in anguish, making supplications or simply standing in a crucial site in history. I forgot about the mechitza and instead found myself in tears: not fearful tears or sad tears or homesick tears, but tears of real gratitude, in the words of the traditional blessing, for having been enlivened, sustained, and enabled to reach this very moment.

I stood in front of the holiest earthly site for the Jewish people as one individual among many, not standing out, yet I brought with me my entire history. In this place, all prayers are accepted into the cracks between the stones, including the prayers of a grateful convert/future rabbi.