Lee Diamond – I remember picture of soldiers by the Kotel
Rabbi Richard Kirchen, the director of NFTY programs in Israel shared a wonderful letter on Facebook, namely: the Tale of two Kotels which inspired these thoughts.
I remember the classic picture of Israeli soldiers standing alongside the Kotel
at the moment that the nation of Israel
was reunited with this powerful symbol of Jewish unity.
2000 years of longing
2000 years of tears of loss.
2000 years of incompleteness
And now the Shofar was blown
To sound our return
Return to our prayer of generations
“Renew Our Days as of Old” was the prayer that burst forth from our lips!
New prayers were composed with the words
ראשית צמיחת גאולתנו
This was to be the ״beginning of our redemption”
When we saw this, Our hearts rejoiced (Isaiah 66)
Our joy was not for a military victory
Our joy as not even theological
Perhaps not even religious
Our joy was entrenched in the past
With generations upon generations of
Distance from our foundation stones
And now : “the Kotel is in our hands”
And it was in our hands
And thoughts and connected to our souls
We could touch it; feel it; meditate upon its very stones
Cry tears of prayer and appreciation.
But then came the establishment
And turned our innocence and purity
Of love for this historical and spiritual connection
Into rules.
Not our rules but their rules
Rules of when, how, with whom and perhaps
Even to Whom we could pray and in what language!
Who could we touch
Where we could stand
With whom we could stand
Who could read the word of God from His Torah
Given at Sinai to ALL of us, then and now
The Black clothed self appointed administrative angels of God
Inspected us
Rejected us
Shouted at us
Spit at us
Ripped our prayer books
God is theirs! They declared in words and actions
Torah is theirs they declared from under black Eastern European hats.
Tradition is only in their hands – Judaism for them is frozen in time.
God has a special deal with them
For then–we were not at Sinai
But the stones now cry
The stones cry for the Jewish people
Who are once again estranged
By our own illegitimate owners, conquerors and bosses of
God in this world
Who try to control God and His people
What they don’t know
Is that: You can remove the Jew from the Kotel
But you can not remove the Kotel from the Jew.
In the absence of a Jewish and democratic government
In our Jewish State
And instead a state that seems to have caved in to the Haredi Mafia
We the Jews will return to our sources and our roots because
הכותל בידינו
the Kotel
Is in Our Hands.
Lee Diamond, rabbi
