Surfaces

Sunday, first day of the week, we travelled by bus to the Old City. It didn't work out quite as we had planned, so we walked from our stop down the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall to Rehov Yaffo (Jaffa Street) and then east to the walled city.

Besieged by professionals offering us guided walking tours, we instead followed the thin early-morning crowd and made our way through the maze of shops to the Western Wall. Ever organized, we first picked up two sets of tickets for the two wall-related tours, then stepped back onto the vast plaza and parted, Laurelle bound for the women's section and Keithen and I into the more extensive men's section. In three languages we were asked whether we had laid tefillin that morning, whether we wanted guidance in saying the appropriate prayers upon visiting the Wall, whether we understood the meaning of this sacred place.

The wall is of course overwhelming and yet comforting in the way that it connects people. (How deeply these are linked I would learn later in the morning.) The people standing at the wall or seated near it, bodies swaying, included representatives of a dozen religious movements, secular Israelis, a group of university instructors chattering away in mixed Hebrew and English about the archaeological and historical, and geopolitical ramifications of the Wall, soldiers in uniform wearing paper kippot plucked from baskets, at least a half-dozen Ethiopian Jews, and a cluster of boys in shirts embroidered with the name of an unfamiliar youth movementm -- they have all converged on the wall, and in the meeting of hot sun, stone, and air, we were becoming entangled even though we approached the wall each in our separate ways.

Keithen found an area empty of people. Here and there, a few yeshiva students lingered like lovers whispering to their Beloved across a garden fence, their right arms resting against the massive cool stones, their foreheads pressed against their exposed forearms. The staff were removing chairs, benches, reading tables, and rolling library carts full of siddurim. Three men from the Former Soviet Union took turns taking pictures as they leaned their backs against the Kotel, struggling to keep their flimsy pick-up kippot (yarmulkes) on their heads as they joked with each other in Russian about whose turn it was to snap the photo. ("Please, Alphonse, it's your turn!" ... "No, after you, Gaston!")  I watched as Keithen focused with his camera at the wall and then, to my astonishment, he zipped it up in its protective pouch, returned it to his pocket, and stretched his arms wide, wider, widest -- in a vain to span the ancient rock face. Arms still outstretched, he leaned his head onto the rock.

I'd forgotten I was carrying a camera. If I hadn't, I likely wouldn't have experienced the moment as powerfully and instead concentrated on taking pictures. But instead I turned to the Kotel and recited snippets of prayers I remembered having learned for this occasion. Not wanting the formal structure I let my words drift into more private territory as my heart was overwhelmed by the presence of the Wall. I was also concerned about attending to Keithen, but the old conversation with God started inside me, and it was good not to treat it as a long distance call subject to roaming charges (old joke, but one that is really about the blessings of intimacy, whether with God, one's beloved family, or the world).

It was then that I pulled out a slip of paper and wrote down several names and a brief prayer for the healing of the people I listed. For the nth time I failed to include myself in the prayer I wrote, feeling, as I always do when I am praying, that I am God's fortunate child blessed with the companionship and love of others.

Something happened to me yesterday, the Rolling Stones sang, but the greatest revelation is not private -- it's the recognition of how everything is -- as the quantum physicists say -- deeply entangled. (See the most recent issue of Scientific American about this!) Every moment overflows with new connections. Every prayer is about feeling connected and wanting to do something with this. Even the pain we momentarily inflict or receive requires us not to disentangle or to disengage out of fear, misunderstanding, or confusion.

There's that familiar Spanish proverb "We make the road by walking", rendered immediate and urgent when Avram and Sarai move forward onto the road suddenly before them and when Moses urges the Israelites to move forward and not look back. Perhaps there is a "quantum proverb" as well: Don't lose your connections: look carefully at what they reveal to you about yourself before you break them. We are always learning; we are all "in-formation". In formation -- out of knowing another, I become more myself and I disclose to the other something about him- or herself.

Keithen turned, he said, "There's Mom," and we walked to rejoin Laurelle.

In the blazing sunlight beneath the great blue sky I did not feel I was walking only toward Laurelle but also toward all the lives that have touched mine with joy and heartbreak, hopes fulfilled and dreams deferred.

Ah, there I go again -- back into the metaphysics and mystery when I am, like Chaim Potok z'l [of blessed memory],  a believer in provisional absolutes and encounters with God that teach me to be reborn again and again.

Tomorrow -- some words about the tunnel under the world, and praying with mallet and wedge, some words about Greenbay Packer kippot, halvah, and fresh pita.

Rabbi Larry Pinsker  (& Rebbetzin 'Relle)

(And when will you write, friends?  We miss you!)