Lee Diamond – The Kotel (Western Wall) Revisited
An ancient wall
Yet, but a support wall
Surrounding and
Supporting the Temple Mount
Not part of the Temple itself
But a retaining wall
Of Mt. Moriah
The “ Mountain of Awe”
Needed to be expanded
To contain the ancient
Second Temple
Where offerings of sacrifice
Were given by our Kohanim
To the Lord of the universe.
The second temple was destroyed
By the Romans
And we were exiled
To an exile and diaspora
With the will of the Creator
And with our will
We rebuilt the third Temple
Yes we rebuilt the 3rd Temple
For the Creator
And He for Us
But now a Temple of
learning and prayer
And community
And though we faced
And remembered the “old”
We advanced in our Judaism
And our understanding
Of the Universal God
And He of and in us!
We remembered the Holy space
But developed “Holy Time”
We mourned our loss
But found Him
In our prayers and songs
In our communities
And He Us
We returned to the ancient land
To the wall
To the “wailing wall”
In our very midst
But we transformed the
Place and the site
from a former memory
Into a Necessity
Into an Object
Of reverence
A fond memory
Of our loss and
Disgrace
became the
Object of our prayers
The prayers of everywhere
The God of Everywhere
Became localized at a place
Again.
Thousands of years of
Growth and Learning
And rethinking our faith
Are narrowed to a single wall
And we now struggle
In ugly battles of “religious”
Wars
An historical memory,
Has become the focus
Wailing for the Old
Has dimmed our
Creative genius
For those who live the past
And dismiss the amazing Jewish genius
For bringing holiness into the everyday
The Kotel will be their Idol
For me and others
The Holy land is
In us and in our hearts
And we in it
A Symbol of our
Joy of return
But never as a idol
To worship
