Prayer is a Mallet and a Wedge

Danny Siegel, an American Jewish poet and champion of tzedakah, once wrote a poem that captures the state of mind I felt on my first visit to Jerusalem almost 42 years ago (gasp) and that came roaring back from memory as we toured the tunnel beneath the Western Wall:

PERSONAL PREFERENCE

I think

(now that I look back)
I’d rather drive a taxi
in Jerusalem
than be the King
of all of South Dakota
or the Cantor
in the Great and Ancient Synagogue
of West Rangoon.

I don’t know why.

Here the sun sets red,
and there the suns set red.

Here the trees sway with infinite grace,
and there the breeze moves the leaves
with equally gentle fingers.

I don’t know why
I’d rather drive a taxi in Jerusalem,

but neither have I come to know
just why the see becomes a daffodil
and not a rose.

Writing decades ago, Danny Siegel speaks of Jerusalem sunsets, but there are other wonders revealed around and beneath this city through the slow, delicate work of archaeologists. For those of you who know about this, please bear with me -- I'm simply dazzled by what we are learning. Searching for God in time and memory is a deeply moving process -- and, more often than not, as Martin Buber was wont to say in countless ways, when we seek God, we discover ourselves in the process. 

Walking in that tunnel was one of the most moving experiences of my life. It's not only because the excavation reveals the Herodian Second Temple as an engineering miracle and wonder of the world -- a miracle that dwarfs the Western Wall to which we flock in prayer. We owe a lot to the courage and brilliance of the engineers and archaeologists who, building upon 19th and 20th century British explorations, have revealed what has been hidden for thousands of years beneath layer upon layer of conquest, rubble, and ruin in the great valleys around the "Old City".

Watching Jews praying at the place in the tunnel which is opposite the "Foundation Stone" of creation, the place where Abraham demonstrated his devotion to God, I could not help but think about all the other stones. The 500-year-old wall that for most people marks the "Old City" is a legacy of the Ottoman Empire. The true wonder lies below: the city built by Herod.

Visiting those enormous excavations beneath the Old City is a lot like walking into one of M.C. Escher's recursive drawings -- do you remember seeing them for the first time, those intersecting flocks of birds and schools of fish, the stairways that change direction and imply conflicting gravitational systems as people ascend and descend? 

The fantastic tour Laurelle described was like a dream. We walked across plexiglass sheets that permitted us to look down onto new excavations -- to see layer upon layer of cityscapes going back over 2,000 years to the time of the Second Temple era. I am sure you already know that archaeologists have uncovered the wall beneath the wall. What we flock to see and before which we utter our prayers at the Western Wall Plaza is a tiny fragment of a wall composed of much larger stones -- and along these massive foundation stones runs an ancient road which the guides have jokingly termed the real Wall Street -- where the ancient routines of everyday survival -- earn a living, buy food and clothing, sustain and protect the life that is precious to you -- were tested by Greek and Roman invaders, by human frailty, by natural calamities and scarcity of resources. 

I simply can't get the image of that ghostly street beneath the plexiglass, metres below us, out of my mind. 

One of the others on the tour was an Orthodox man who was guiding a group of women to a place designated for prayer that is as close to the location of the Foundation Stone under the Dome of the Rock as Jews are permitted to approach. The Orthodox guide was saying (in English) to the women who had descended to the tunnel in order to say those prayers at the Stone -- that the purpose of their prayers was not only to petition God for blessings of prosperity, large families, peace, health, and so on, but also for the blessings of -- and here he stopped, puzzled, searching for a word, asking  "Aych omrim dimyon b'Anglit?" -- "How do you say dimyon in English?"

Without skipping a beat, I said, "Imagination. Birchot dimyon is 'the blessings of imagination.'"  He thanked me, but I should have thanked him for a phrase so important to everything I value and believe about all of us and about the best we achieve as persons. We imagine how to succeed at the business of life. It is a work of imagination to make the materials of everyday existence sing songs of praise to God -- to believe that we can build places where God's presence will be felt. Everything that is grand about Jewish life is an act of imagining that life need not be defined by the routines of survival alone.

Which brings me to where I learned that prayer is a mallet and a wedge. It's at the end of the tunnel tour, but I realized this "truth" had been comprehensible through the tour and in every millimetre and metre and kilometre of this great architectual feat. In an animated film illustrating how the gigantic stones for the foundation of the buried wall were quarried, stonemasons took iron wedges and  chisels  and hammered them with mallets into the native rock until they faceted it into enormous blocks, which they then moved with elementary "machines" like log rollers, pulleys and ropes, inclined planes, and platforms pulled by men and oxen.

You can see the animated video at

http://english.thekotel.org/content.asp?back=1&id=97

and also go on a virtual tour of the tunnels and explore the discoveries at the site by browsing at

http://english.thekotel.org/content.asp?Id=29

I of course was lost in the mallets, chisels, and wedges -- patient and repetitive human actions that created the real wall. The stonecutters and masons earned a living through their work, but in every blow that shaped and dressed the stones, these ancients gave themselves over a sacred dimension in life. Their work contributed to achieving something greater than their own lives. I think of prayer as a mallet, a chisel, and a wedge giving definition to our lives.  The taxi drivers who tell me they are here to rebuild Jerusalem, the merchants whose civility and honesty seem to transform the most mundane commercial acts into holy moments as they measure out grains, spices, cheeses, hummus and techina, fruits and vegetables, and breads, reminds us that something really does happen when we see ourselves as agents of our own destiny. 

I am almost hesitant to include what must by now be a familiar inspirational story told about Christopher Wren, one of the greatest of architects in England, who was charged with the building of St. Paul's cathedral in London. He once walked among the men who were at work constructing St. Paul’s, which he had designed. "What are you doing?" he asked one of the workmen. The man replied, "I am cutting a piece of stone." As he went on, he asked the same question to another man, who answered, "I am earning five shillings twopence a day." And to a third man he addressed the same inquiry. This time, the man answered, "I am helping Sir Christopher Wren build a cathedral to the glory of God." 

I don't know whether it's fair to expect constancy or idealism of this sort when so much of living is routine and when inspiration is tolerable only in small doses taken irregularly, when spirituality has been reduced to tics, trembling, and theatrics. But I've already heard three taxi drivers and a falafel delivery man speak of the process of how their lives changed when they moved to Israel and Jerusalem. I rather doubt they are paid aliyah [immigration to Israel] publicists. It moves me to hear their spontaneous, unscripted, non-professional testimonials. 

When someone sees beyond work and daily wage to one's place in the transformation of everyday life into a domain of holiness or a work of art, then we take place as agents of a sacred order. It's not only rabbis, priests, and teachers who dignify life in this manner. It's anyone who takes the trouble to invest meaning in the tasks he or she performs. 

I hope you are all well.  Thanks for checking in!

Rabbi Larry