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Published: March 12th 2013
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Before the vendors open shop
Me in my "suitably modest" attire The Western Wall We wake early. Or at least, we’re out of the hostel before the street vendors open up. The streets are wider, brighter with the reduced clutter of stuff and clamor of conversation. We’re headed to the Western Wall.
As we walk, I make myself put aside my initial emotional reaction to seeing the Wall yesterday. Really, it was the reaction at seeing the undeniably differently sized spaces for men and women to approach the Wall. Yesterday, I saw the clump of bodies on the women’s side, vying for space to touch and pray up close, contrasted sharply with the black shapes on the men’s side, spread out and moving about freely. There were just as many women as men. But they had a third of the space. The softness of the sunset colors and the awesome fact that I was standing in one of the hearts of the world couldn’t stop me from seeing that discrepancy. I had to walk away actually, leave the sight until Henry came to me and held me tight.
There is nothing effective I can do right now about that feeling, that sense of injustice, a time-honored one. I would
still like to approach this place more closely. So I wrap up that feeling and put it aside for a re-examination later on.
Every entrance to the plaza in front of the Western Wall has a security checkpoint. It’s quick though and soon we’re in one of the largest open spaces in the Old City, second only to the walking areas on the Temple Mount above. As we enter, I move quickly past the entrance to the men’s section. Henry gives me a quick hug outside the women’s section and alone, I move past the small table with its two watchful women, who, I am sure, are placed there to observe proper dress and conduct. I see a couple of female tourists with cameras standing on chairs to take pictures of the men’s section and I admit I find something very odd about that. What a strange voyeuristic desire, strange to me at least. But again, I turn my eyes resolutely away from the men’s section, determined to not let that upset me right now.
All the women at the Wall are dressed in traditional black, black mid-calf skirt, black long-sleeved shirt or sweater, black kerchief. They chat
some but mostly they draw as close as possible to the wall, their heads even touching the stone while they pray with their own prayerbooks or ones drawn from the cart loaded up with small siddurim (prayerbooks) all in Hebrew. For a while I hang back, standing, while most are seated. I look at the wall and see the plants growing out of it, the doves flying back and forth. I go up to touch it when there is an opening. It is stone, sure enough. There are slips of paper crammed into the nooks and crannies in between the enormous stones. Prayers, special, intimate. I step back to my former place and then sit down. I feel that other women have a more urgent desire to draw right up close.
I keep my eyes open throughout. And observe. On one level, I see all this action and hear the murmurs, the movement. I see the stones in the walls and how far up they rise. It’s a soothing scene but I am just an observer. On another level, I feel a rising tide of emotion. A tangled, shifting mass of pure feeling, joy, sadness, anger, love, fear, all
the extremes swirling together. A morass so encompassing that if I give into it, I know I will not be able to control it. So I keep it contained, turning away from it when I need to, observing more and then letting myself feel again.
I think it would be hard to approach this place with any openness of mind and body and not feel that undercurrent. No matter what your creed. This is a place that people have died to reach, this is a place that people of all stripes have passed by without a thought for millennia, this is a place that the world focuses its attention on all too often. Or perhaps not enough, depending on your viewpoint. I have never been in a place like this before.
Yad Vashem I go from the Western Wall to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum and Memorial of Jerusalem. From weighty place to weighty place. Ancient history to modern. Henry’s uncle drops me off there, having picked us up just outside the Old City, while he and Henry go to see other family. Henry’s been to Yad Vashem already and like the Western Wall, it is a
place that is understandably difficult to re-visit in a short amount of time.
As would be hoped, Yad Vashem is a well-thought out and extensive place. It was started in 1953 by the Israeli parliament, the Knesset but perhaps because of its timelessness and I’m sure because of constant and thorough curating, the place feels very modern. Not old-fashioned or even old. The heart of the place, the museum, takes up my whole time. And I end up having to rush through the end because I have a set time to meet back up with Henry and his uncle. The museum takes you through the start of Nazi anti-Semitism to the immediate aftermath of the war with displaced Jews and the massive social changes that the Holocaust wrought in Jewish communities, European and elsewhere. I would have wished for at least another hour to be able to examine the other parts of the complex, leaving myself time to take in some fresh air as well.
The museum has so much information, very carefully prepared, that I find it hard to emotionally take it all in, or even intellectually take it all in. It would be an interesting exercise to return every once and while and concentrate on different aspects of the place. For example, within the main museum itself, there were so many personal stories. The curators sought to humanize the Holocaust by occasionally following one person and their art, stories, or poems through a couple of exhibits, through time as the time bomb ticked away. And then there were countless one-off stories of particular families or individuals. Too many to take in to any extent but the curators definitely did their job. The effect is wholly humanizing and real. No hiding in statistics or political recounting. I learn later that all the artifacts displayed are real, no recreations.
From Yad Vashem, Henry’s uncle drives us out of Jerusalem, pointing out the restored forests, the different architectural styles and more of the Israeli countryside. I am not really ready to leave Jerusalem yet but we have to move on. Time to visit Henry’s family. We stay for a while in his great-uncle’s home and are treated to an enormous mid-day “snack.” And then we take the train to Netanya where we will spend the night until we fly out. Some of Henry’s family friends there and have graciously offered to host us, sight unseen. They own an apartment in one of the many, many, many high-rise apartment buildings in this sleepy, nondescript beach town north of Tel Aviv. My guide book softly disparages the place as being the destination of older touristas who choose to pay more for their beach access and quiet in the summers. And there is not much else. But we are staying in a lovely home and get to see another slice of Israeli lifestyle. I learn that modern apartments are now individually equipped with a bomb room, a special fortified room in the middle of the apartment with heavy duty shutters. Of course, normally it’s just a room, an office in this case. But still, once again, it’s hard to ignore the fact that Israelis live with a constant sense of imminent danger. Exaggerated or not, the feeling is there. But until that danger springs to life, mostly life is just this, dinner with friends and family, home-cooked meals and reminiscing of childhood and talk of “what shall we do tomorrow?”
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