After Kivunim left Kibbutz Ketura, we went to the southern-most Israeli city of Eilat for a day of transition. We were supposed to go to Petra in Jordan, for the beginning of the day, but due to pre-election security precautions we stayed in Eilat for the remainder of our orientation, before heading up to our home base in Jerusalem.
Our day in Eilat was pretty un-programmed and relaxed. We hung out on the beach and went out for a fantastic dinner, bracing ourselves for a new lifestyle. Soon school would start, and the summer-program-esque portion of our program would be over.
The four-hour bus ride up to Jerusalem was another peak of our anticipation. Kivunim would finally settle down (for a month at least!). Once we were in the city limits, Naomi Shemer’s “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav” (Jerusalem of Gold) and Matisyahu’s “Jerusalem” blasted in the bus’ stereo. We all sat up straight in our seats, letting the city pour into us. We descended into a tunnel, and the Matisyahu’s song came to its climax as we shot out onto the highway, overlooking the Old City with the Dome of the Rock blazing in the window. The energy on the bus took on a life of its own as we all reacted in our own individual ways to our almost theatrical entrance into the heart of the city.
Soon the world outside, the streets, the signs, the restaurants and clubs, became potential pieces of home. I looked freshly on everything, anticipating how familiar it would all be to me by the end of the year. We arrived at our home at Beit Shmuel (an appendage of Hebrew Union College and the World Union for Progressive Judaism), explored our rooms, and the common areas. We were reunited with our possessions, which had waited here while we were in the desert. Soon we ventured out into the city.
We are about as close as anyone to the center of Jerusalem. Our building overlooks the Old City and downtown. The legendary Ben-Yehudah Street is less than ten minutes away by foot. The other gap-year program students seem to be everywhere. In the first few days I met up with a number of friends from Young Judaea Year Course, and met many others on different programs through friends on Kivunim. The life on foot is fantastic, after eighteen years of using vehicular transportation for nearly every activity. I am really enjoying soaking in the new map of this city, exploring its many villages on morning jogs. It’s no American grid city, but somehow its organization feels intuitively logical, based on its rolling hills and development as an outgrowth of the Old City.
On the first Shabbat we all made a pilgrimage (eh, more like fifteen minute walk) to the Kotel of Western Wall. Again I looked on Israel in a new light. Every time I have visited the Kotel in the past, I feel this incredible pressure to have a transformational experience. I often feel compelled to recite prayers and observe certain rituals that aren’t central to my daily life. This time was different.
As I pressed my body against the familiar stones of the millennia of Jewish history, I pondered my connection to the People. Not just to my ancestors and the Jews who prayed in the Temple here thousands of years ago, but also to the people around me. This is a typical dynamic for me at the Western Wall: feeling very connected and utterly alone at the same time. In silence, I lean against the wall, at the place where I always go when I get to visit. I try to push it over, making my experience not just spiritual but physical. I am exhausting myself, listening to the Kabbalat Shabbat prayers swirling around me in different tunes and voices. I feel swallowed up by the Wall, and suddenly I feel the pressure of wanting to be able to pray fluently simply lift from my body.
I realize that I am having a very religious experience, through appreciating history and feeling the intergenerational quality of this place. Feeling no sense of contrived melodrama, as I sometimes know myself to do at the Kotel, I walk away. I join up with the rest of the group, which has found a nice place to pray, near the back, next to the mechitza (dividing wall between men and women) so we can all be together. I join the prayer service and sing and dance with an adjacent group of religious soldiers, and then find a place to sit.
As the service comes to a close, I am approached by my roommate and close friend Zach Nanus. He asks me what I’m thinking. I tell him about my experience, how for the first time at the Kotel I’ve been able to appreciate my own spiritual experience as a Jew with a deeply personal investment in the history, present and future of this place. I explain my belief that it is more important to connect to the reasons why we are motivated to pray (connection to others, connection to ourselves, connection to history, mourning, goal-setting, processing, etc.), and to achieve the goals of prayer in our own ways, than to just go through the motions with no authentic motivation. We launch into a deep discussion about religion that alleviates any residual fear about not having a profound and meaningful experience at the Wall. Others joined our conversation throughout the evening, and by the end I felt very spiritually uplifted.
The idea of having a personal experience at the Kotel is popular, but perhaps more importantly, there’s no one way to do it, we decided. That’s an important idea to put into words at the Kotel of all places.
The popular Jewish-American reggae artist Matisyahu paraphrases the psalms when he sings “Jerusalem, if I forget you, let my right hand forget what it’s supposed to do.” The day before yesterday I gave somebody directions to the Central Bus Station in Hebrew for the first time. Everyday I feel more connected to this city as my neighborhood. When we first arrived I was struck by how stimulating the smell of it is, clear and cultured at the same time. Jerusalem is an icon of Jewish history, in joy and peril. It is a staple of our present reality, the seat of Israel’s government, and the home of countless year-programs. It is a place that presents many questions, and countless opportunities to learn.
Now that I’m here, I’m sure I’ll never forget Jerusalem; I just hope I never take it for granted.
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