I stand at the Kotel, the Wailing Wall
I see her frozen tears and her eternal smiles
Her passing clouds with many sighs
Her pitiful laughter concerning those who wanted to destroy her but did not succeed
I read her holy books and hundreds of thousands of names
Those from Egypt, Babylon, Rome, Spain, Hungary, America and Africa
I hear the cries from Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Dachau
And the playful delight of today’s Jewish children in her courtyard
I see the auto-da-fes, the Crusades, the pogroms and the Roman torture chambers
Mothers crying about their children
Women of all ages
But also the Israeli flag with King David’s star on top of Jerusalem’s stones.
The thousands of written prayers in the curves of its walls
I encounter the crying soldier, the sobbing stone hard businessman,
The movie star, the confused politician, the housewife and the Yeshiva student
An American President who has not yet learned that with all his power, he can’t impose his will on these heavenly stones
Yeshayahu stands next to me
A little further on Rabbi Akiva
My teachers, Maimonides, Yehudah Halevi, Hillel and Shamai
Behind me the Gaon of Vilna in deep thought
The Baal Shem Tov in exalted devotion
Men, women, children. Mitnagdim, Chassidim, Ethiopians, Yemenites, Sephardim and Ashkenazim
Jews of all colors
There is no time, no clock, no early or later
Just broken eternity
I stand but can not grasp
I say my tefilah
Then the truth descends on me:
I know
I have never left this place.
I find myself here for thousands of years
The return to Zion is unprecedented
A happening sui generis
The creation of the State of Israel is a surprise
The survival of the Jewish people a shock
A breach in a world where people do not want to be surprised
And therefore Israel irritates
The mighty Egyptian, the Babylonian and the Persian conquered the world with much noise, pomp and splendor
And disappeared
The Greek and the Roman followed with their drumbeat and war carriages and died out
Others came and held their torch high and burned out
The Jew saw them all, surpassed them all and became what he always was: immortal
O’ that Israel’s enemies would just wake up!
When will they learn that Israel never left its homeland but were forced out against their will
An that Titus and his army were ultimately defeated by a people of orphans
By an ever-dying people which never died?
There is no victory for those who fight a nation which kept praying for thousands of years to return to its capital which they emotionally never left.
Where their bodies were resurrected while they were turned into ashes at Auschwitz
What to do with a people which mourned for its Temple and rebuild it in its hearts while sitting on the floor in deep mourning, years after year, thousands of times
How to deal with a people which covers its dead with the dust of land of Israel while their tombstone stands in countries of animosity
How to defeat a people whose home in exile turned into a portable land of Israel in which Moses and Hebrew prophets are still alive
And teach Torah
Through Israel we perceive the infinite
The God of Israel
Israel and its people are indispensable
God’s witness
In a world where the ordinary has become a hallmark
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