Gettin' Jiggy wit the Jews

It was like ring around the rosies, except for I was in a circle with a bunch of jews, and we were moshing--after all, it was the Sabbath coming in. "Shabbat shalom!" people kept saying. And actually, we weren't really moshing (mosh pit--not sure how to spell it), but people were drumming on their Torah bestrewn portable tables set up west of "the Wailing Wall"--the largest remaining portion of the Temple, just one wall of massive stones that used to bear up something holy. So now that is all they have: they come every Friday to wedge prayers of scrolls into cracks between the ancient Roman stones that are at least 2000 years old. "Come back." They come to welcome in the Sabbath Friday evening.

Even though it's a ruin, it's the holiest thing they have. This is the world's most sacred ground of all, if you're a jew. My friends and I were wearing kipas, the small round woven caps, to respectfully come here ourselves. I touched the wall and prayed, myself--it was moving. In the mid-2nd century they were scattered by impatient Romans who were tired of revolts, and almost two thousand years of exile later--2000 years which include almost perpetual, universal scorn, if nothing else the Holocaust--this was all they had left, but still at least half the jews we talked to turned out to be from the States, they were here on a pilgrimage. That must have been what an older man took my friend to be on when he kindly approached him and said, "Welcome home."



I'm not sure how to explain why or how I suddenly found myself in a de facto mosh pit with them. I guess it was just a lot of revelry to welcome in the Sabbath--way too much enthusiasm about it, in my opinion. Maybe they were just enthused about the chance to welcome it, whatever it might be.

There were now worshippers three layers deep against the wall, bobbing like people falling asleep in class with gusto, in order to show they loved God with all their hearts, might, minds and strength (Deutoronomy 8, I think). The Wall is at the bottom of a slope that's secluded sort of by two flanking walls. Fifty feet behind those praying, singing began around tables. Then dancing in rings. Then the music got crazy and the yells got raucous and the invitations got plentiful and somehow all 9 of my buddies and I ended up running around, arm in arm, in a ring with our new friends whose favorite language was Hebrew. I had declined at first, out of respect for what they should have had respect for, I thought, but then it just felt like I ought to join in: so I did. And maybe the enthusiasm was fervor or something. I saw a man who liked like my grandpa walk by--right after I'd danced a few rounds (oh, and males and females are segregated: this was a brothers' night out)--and he was singing along with the yahoos. A five or so year old was holding his hand, and clapping his other hand onto it as they went, in tune with the song--maybe I just didn't know how to rock religiously. "So darn cute," my buddy said as they passed. It really was. It was like a party too. It didn't turn out to be very deep, but it was a good experience, and I'm glad, just once, I got jiggy wit the jews.

But that's really the most minor of the things I'll take away. The two things I'll remember are touching the wall, and one teenage jew I saw before things got hectic. He looked like a simple kid--normal face, roundy cheeks, very much just ordinary. The wall wasn't even full of people praying near it yet; of course, this kid wasn't trying to get closer.

I tried, but I could only guess what it would be like to have my identity wrapped up in a culture who waited for a god who had not delivered them for 2000 years. Moses led them through the desert for 40; now they had no one, and they'd wandered much more. And now another major world religion had one of its most sacred sites sitting squarely on top of what used to be the most sacred of all to yours. What are the odds you'll get that back? 2000 years and one Dome of the Rock later, how much hope is there now?

Maybe we can hope even when there is no hope--I don't know. I do know that while everyone was observing letters of the law that I'd never even heard of and performing rituals with obsidian-edges of exactness, that my favorite part of the night--and maybe even week--by far, wasn't. Just a teenage kid, so inobtrusive behind the milling, murmuring, surging crowd that I can't believe I saw him. I sort of got it then. It was like I saw the whole history of his people in his eyes, the trials and utter exile and feelingly one-way prayers. But he still prayed them, and I think he really meant them. I don't know how to say it in a way that is convincing enough, but I know it was convincing enough for me when I saw the kid stand anonymously and cry.