Until this morning, I had avoided the Old City. I am not sure why. I think there was some feeling of indignation in me; a certainty that there is nothing sacred about the Western Wall.
I come from a Liberal Jewish tradition that runs directly counter to such national religious architecture. The Diaspora is our permanent home; the synagogue is our replacement Temple; the Shabbat table is our everlasting altar to God.
I have prayed twice (I think) at the Kotel. It means going through body scanners and security checks through the army to stand underneath nationalist symbols surrounded by men. Nothing about it feels sacred.
This morning, however, I joined the other yeshiva bochers from CY and went down to the egalitarian section of the Kotel: Azarat Yisrael. There, there are no army checkpoints or flags. It looks more like the site of an archaeological dig. Propped up by scaffolding that snakes round towards the ancient site, it is a little oasis among ruins.
Ruins is exactly what they are. There is nothing polished about this section of wall. Broken rocks everywhere. Weeds growing in the nooks. Smashed up slabs. It looks like the site of a disaster, as it should.
On these liminal stones two thousand years ago, an ancient cult was destroyed because its adherents rebelled against a mighty empire. From then on, there was no more priesthood or ancient Israelite religion. The ruins are testament to all that was lost.
And out of that disaster came something new. Prayers replaced sacrifices; rabbis replaced priests; and the grand courtyards were replaced by storytelling.
Now the stones are a testament to the power of memory – how, by holding onto meaning, civilisations can endure beyond their physical structures.
Yesterday and Monday, I was back in the Jordan Valley doing protective presence with Bedouin families.
Their rubble is more recent than this.
Their rubble is the dirt tracks they take their goats down while settlers ride big cars down paved roads. Theirs is the ruins of their tents from settler invasions; the lack of running water while Israelis draw baths in villages above them. Theirs is the accumulating rubbish that nobody will come to collect.
I was slated in the Jewish Chronicle for signing a letter with the other rabbis that called this apartheid. What other word is there for it? What else can you call it? The only thing they have in common is the army, and their guns are aimed from the settlers towards the Palestinians.
The Bedouin have already had much of their culture reduced to rubble. Before the British imperialists arrived, they traversed the entire trans-Jordan, shifting their herds with the seasons. Then the people were walled in; confined to borders they’d not before known; deprived of the culture they had built.
What remains for them now is a rubble of their civilisation. A small enclave where their families can keep chickens. And even that is being taken away from them.
Across their land, settlers have planted Israeli flags. They are signs to remind them of their humiliation. They are only there as symbols that the Palestinians have been conquered, and will be conquered further.
Out of this destruction, they build their own semiotics, so that something of them cannot be destroyed. Kheffiyes wrapped around their heads. Necklaces with the historic lands bearing the Palestinian flag. Songs they teach their children: “I am a Palestinian; my blood is Palestinian.”
I realise now that we are not really here to prevent the destruction. That does not seem within the power of a few non-violent humanitarians. We are here to be witnesses.
We are here to see how a culture is being destroyed. We are here with a memory, which we have held since a Temple was broken two thousand years ago, that they cannot destroy a people entirely. They cannot destroy your spirit.
We are here to say: your lives are worth living and your culture worth defending.
We are here to assist in the building of memory, so that not everything can be destroyed.
May they remember, even in the rubble.
One who cries out over the past prays in vain. And if you are walking on the way and you hear a scream from the city and you say “may it be God’s will that such a scream does not come from my house” – that prayer was delivered in vain. – Berachot 54a
Sim Lev 