It’s Almost September? …. Time to Make an Appointment With Your Past!

September starts on SUNDAY!  Already our calendar programs and Daytimers are filling up.  School calendars, after school calendars, and doctors’ appointments hang juxtaposed to Pilates and Zumba schedules, adhering magnetically to the fridge.

Perhaps even MORE alarming is the arrival of EREV ROSH HASHANAH on Wednesday September 4!  Yes, the holidays are “early” this year as the Jewish lunar calendar plays “catch up,” and so the first Day of the month of Tishrei, the Birthday of the World, arrives Wednesday evening!  Don’t fret.  This won’t happen again until 2089. It DOES mean, however, that you’ll be celebrating CHANUKAH on THANKSGIVING DAY this year!

As you recover from the shock, ask yourself the question: “Are we ever REALLY ready for Rosh Hashanah?”  After all, who has the time to sit in Shul and reflect on their life… we’re too busy living it! God knows we never have enough time. We rush constantly to get things done “on time” yet we always run out of it, squander it, put things off until another time. Try though we may, we don’t even find time for the important things… saying optimistically, “oh well, the time will come,” even though our voices are already tinged with hurt or regret.

Our inability to stop and smell the roses comes as no surprise to God. God knew, even back in the days of Moses, that we might get so busy that we would forget to “take time.” And so God makes annual, structured demands on our time.  It isn’t until we age and mellow that we realize what a “gift” these demands are!

Our calendar is filled with holidays and festivals unique to the Jewish People.  These marked occasions, with a few exceptions, come directly from the Torah.  The Torah refers to the festivals of the Jewish calendar as moadim, "appointed times," and as mikraei kodesh, "callings of holiness." "These are God's appointed times," reads the introductory verse to the Torah's listing of the festivals in the book of Leviticus, "callings of holiness, which you shall call in their appointed times."

These “appointed times” form a map of the physical as well as the spiritual journey of our people. Whether we are born Jews, or become Jews, we each lay claim to the journey of discovery from Canaan to Egypt, to the wilderness, to the foot of Mt. Sinai, and the giving of the Law.

When we mark Passover, Sukkot, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Simchat Torah, Chanukah,Tu B’shvat, Purim, as well as the more recent holidays of Holocaust Remembrance and Israel Independence, we are scheduling an appointment with our past, with our roots, with our God, with our souls, with hopes and dreams that reach into the future.  During some festivals we say a bracha “Al Ha Nisim” “For the Miracles”.  The English translation thanks God for the Miracles that were done “in the days that were, at THIS season.”  Time becomes interchangeable.  That which was THEN becomes NOW.

Just as Shabbat arrives at sunset every week, regardless of whether or not we set time aside for it… it just comes.  I am frequently surprised when my computer alarm goes off late Friday afternoon to alert me to impending Candle Lighting time in Syria, Virginia.  How is it possible? How has another week slipped by?  Where did the time go?  But then, once again, there is the anticipation of Shabbat. Time and time again. 

Soon we will welcome the year 5774 as a community. And though we are here together in time, like science-fiction time travelers we simultaneously visit the past, as the sights and sounds of the shofar, the melodies, words and movement of davening, and the white kippot and Torah mantel all evoke memories of holidays past, of loved ones, of special places and tastes and smells. We rise as one for the Shema, feel the fringes of the tallis, and we are transported to the place of our ancestors.

God has set these appointed times as an appointment with the past, an encounter with an event and phenomenon in our history. This Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I urge you to make the time and take the opportunity to call forth the particular holiness of these days and to tap the spiritual resources, which they hold. 

Shana Tova, Happy New Year.

May you and all you care for be blessed and written and sealed in The Book of Life.

Rabbi Rose

Creating Sacred Communities – There’s No One Template!

 I hope you’ve all been having a rejuvenating summer.  Gary and I continue on with home improvement projects and trips up and down the New Jersey Turnpike. We also fight our noble battle with the moles, voles and squirrels that attack our produce in situ.

Last week, my summer travels led me to Houston, Texas! Yes, the Piedmont Rebbe saddled up and headed out to the fourth largest city in America, SPACE CITY, HOUSTON!  While there, I had an interesting cultural experience.  I attended an Evangelical Christian service on Sunday morning at a MEGA CHURCH. 

Now this wasn’t my first Mega Church experience. (Well, not counting the one in California, for a “Living Nativity” with live camels for the Three Wise Men.) But, this WAS the kind of Mega Church I’d only read about in my Jewish books on the spirituality of welcoming.

 

The outside of the building was unassuming.  The inside, however, caught me unprepared.  The first thing I saw, passing through the entrance was a large coffee bar with extensive seating, and a lounge area with speakers broadcasting the service.  I walked past signs indicating Sunday school and child care hours.  Entering the sanctuary, I gave out a gasp.  Over a thousand people for an 11:00 am service…. a third of them holding cardboard coffee cups. Two Jumbo-tron screens filled the stage with song lyrics.  A professional seven-piece country band played and sang their hearts out with the help of a state-of-the-art sound system and lighting. I found a seat at the back of the room near the sound and light boards and looked out at a swaying sea of a thousand people up on their feet singing “Holy, Holy, Holy.”

Wow.

And now I would like to tell you about my travels to another spot, a few days before the trip to Texas.  Between Warrenton and Gainesville, there is a fairly new Assisted Living Facility, The Villa.  What makes it new to me is that, so far, there have been no Jewish folks living there.  That changed a few months ago when a couple from Alexandria made the move out to our area. Not long after the move, the husband became ill and died.  I had the honor of meeting the extended family and conducting the funeral.

A week later, the widow approached me to ask if it would be possible to have a memorial service at The Villa, for friends. “I would like to say Kaddish, but there are no Jews at The Villa, and I don’t know any Jews in town,” she said.  “Don’t worry,” I said, “you will have a minyan.”

We have a fabulous, caring community.  In the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, ten members of our congregation of every age, found the time to come and support a Jewish woman that they did not know.  All I had to do was ask and the e-mails and phone calls came in immediately. By the end of the service and social hour, it was impossible to tell that the widow, her son and daughter were not ‘old-time’ friends of the Fauquier Jewish Congregation.  The outpouring of warmth, concern and friendship brought smiles to everyone’s faces.

You may have noticed that FJC is NOT a congregation of a thousand people.  But it certainly is a congregation of small, caring groups.  Even the largest congregation cannot sustain itself unless its membership can find ways to interact intimately!

Last year some of our more established families walked in at Rosh Hashanah and exclaimed “WHERE DID ALL THESE JEWISH PEOPLE COME FROM?” Well, according to a conversation I had recently with Jeff Dannick, Director of the Northern Virginia Jewish Community Center, Jewish growth is heading our way.

Once again we will start up “Tot Shabbat” as the need has reappeared.  Our Religious School is expanding.  There has been increased interest in Torah study and Adult Education, and Book Club is still going strong.  WE ARE OPEN TO ANY AND ALL IDEAS AND REQUESTS FOR WAYS TO CONNECT!

As we approach the coming New Year, I hope you will find a way that YOU would like to connect with people at FJC. 

Judaism doesn’t ask for a community of a thousand.  It DOES require a minimum of ten to make a minyan, the smallest number for a living Jewish community.  I hope we can COUNT YOU IN THIS YEAR!

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rose Jacob

America’s Newest Citizens Welcomed by Dave Matthews, Thomas Jefferson and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson – The road to American Citizenship is an arduous one… and that is just the PAPERWORK!

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July Fourth, 2013, 6:15 a.m.  Gary and I head down to Charlottesville for a very special event. We were thrilled to “score” tickets to this “sold out event” the day they went up for grabs. The venue was Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson and no, it wasn’t a rock concert, but rather the fifty-first Fourth of July Naturalization Ceremony at Monticello!  The tickets were free and the temperature and humidity guaranteed to be high.  Our designated arrival time at the remote parking lot was 7:15 am so that we might be searched, banded and loaded on buses in time for a 7:45 am departure to the top of the mountain. For the next ninety minutes, an undulating sea of red, white and blue fashions filed out of school buses with all the excitement of school children on a field trip.  Gary and I must be NUTS to be doing this, but then again, so are the hundreds of other people streaming around us.   Yup.  We are SURROUNDED by DEMOCRACY JUNKIES!

We met people who do this year after year, because they can’t think of a better way to spend the Fourth of July!  We went because we wanted to witness the magic, the drama, and the thrill of what it is like to BECOME an American citizen. There is nothing quite like it anywhere in the world.

During the ceremony, Dave Matthews, originally from South Africa, recounted his rocky journey to American Citizenship. He attributed his eventual acquisition of citizenship to his single mother’s dogged persistence, recounting that three years into the process, the INS notified her that all their documentation and filing paperwork had been lost, and she had to start the process all over again. Eventually she was able  gain citizenship for herself and her four children. He spoke from the heart. He spoke directly and with great empathy to the soon-to-be citizens.  In researching his life, I found that Dave Matthews had been born a Quaker, and did not want to be conscripted into military service in Apartheid era South African.

Next, Federal Judge Harvie Wilkinson III of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit also addressed the newly minted citizens on separation of Church and State, quoting Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802.

 "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State." Jefferson reflected his frequent speaking theme that the government is not to interfere with religion.

As Jews, we are painfully aware of the obstacles to immigration placed on Jews as they desperately tried to escape the net of death cast broadly over Europe by the Nazi’s.  Our own State Department, rife with anti-semitism, withheld thousands and thousands of life-saving visas by placing obstacle after obstacle in front of perspective immigrants. It seems that even today, jumping through hoops is a favorite exercise at the US Immigration and Naturalization Service! It seems that there are still obstacles to overcome. But the race is not to the swift and the process can take years if not decades.

No matter what your politics, and your views toward Immigration Reform, we are, ultimately, a nation of immigrants. Musician and philanthropist Dave Matthews spoke eloquently on the subject.  He reminded us, that, with the exception of Native Americans, we are ALL immigrants; no matter HOW LONG AGO our ancestors arrived on these shores.  He quoted Emma Lazarus’s poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty , which I give you here in its entirety.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 

After the ceremony, Gary and I took a stroll over to an important grave-site at Monticello.  It is a Jewish grave, and so, even though there is a low fence around it, many Jews have stepped over that low fence to approach the grave and set down small memorial stones on the marble marker, as is the custom when visiting Jewish cemeteries. I was touched and surprised at this gesture. This is the grave of Rachel Phillips Levy, mother of the first Jewish-American Naval Commodore, Uriah P. Levy, a devoted admirer of Thomas Jefferson, who purchased Monticello and whose family had preserved it from destruction for nine decades.

Commodore Levy believed that the houses of great men should be preserved as "monuments to their glory.”

Reflecting back on the events of the morning, I could not help but be proud that the actions of this Jewish family had allowed Monticello to stand so that we might have days such as these, blessed with promise and hope, and with the energy and passion of those who have chosen to join their lives to a country like no other on earth.

 

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi Rose

 

 

 

 

JEWISH READING – A Journey from OY to JOY – frequently in the same book!

OY!  Is suffering part of the Jewish Experience? – You betcha!

JOY! Is joy part of the Jewish Experience? – You betcha!

What better way to capture all the Oy and Joy than through reading a diverse selection of Jewish books? The Fauquier Jewish Congregation, my congregation, has an active book club. Some people cycle in and out depending on how busy their lives are.  We’ve shared friendship, many meals and LOTS of books over the past five years. This summer, (and the rest of the year) why not sample books on Jewish themes, Jewish experiences, Jewish history, or Jewish love stories? There are novels that read like history and history books that read like fiction.  Memoirs of Jews in far away places like India, Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Hungary, Argentina, England, Maine, Germany, France, Spain and Virginia tell stories that couldn’t be made up!

How can you up your Jewish I.Q.?  Literature and history are two of the easiest and most satisfying ways.  I hope you will take a look at some of what we have read.  There is only one “stinker” in the list: “Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean,” but we should have seen that one coming! Some of our favorite fun reads were “SAVE THE DELI” and “OUTWITTING HISTORY” and some of the most poignant, “THE INVISIBLE WALL”, “THE GIRL FROM FOREIGN” and “MY FATHER’S PARADISE.”  “START UP NATION,” about Israel’s economic ingenuity, was a big hit, as was “THE GREAT ESCAPE,” a story of nine Hungarian scientists who escaped to the US and changed the face of American physics and science. “THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION” was FABULOUS and INNOVATIVE… and best “read” as an audio book due to the fine characterizations of the reader.

Our next two reads for July and August are: “RAQUELA: A WOMAN OF ISRAEL” by Ruth Gruber and “THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE” by Julie Orringer.

RAQUELA: A WOMAN OF ISRAEL - A National Jewish Book Award–winning biography: A fascinating look at the early years of Israel’s statehood, experienced through the life of a pioneering nurse. During her extraordinary career, nurse Raquela Prywes was a witness to history. She delivered babies in a Holocaust refugee camp and on the Israeli frontier. She crossed minefields to aid injured soldiers in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, and organized hospitals to save the lives of those fighting the 1967 Six-Day War. Along the way her own life was a series of triumphs and tragedies mirroring those of the newly formed Jewish state.

THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE - Paris 1937. Andras Lévi, a Hungarian-Jewish architecture student, arrives from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he promised to deliver. But when he falls into a complicated relationship with the letter's recipient, he becomes privy to a secret that will alter the course of his—and his family’s history.

Here is a partial list of our reading from the past five  years. Enjoy your summer reading, and don’t forget the sunblock!

1.    A Woman in Jerusalem – A.B. Yehoshua

2.    Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People – Jon Entine

3.    Betraying Spinoza – Rebecca Goldstein

4.     Everything is Illuminated: A Novel - Jonathan Safron Foer

5.    In the Garden of the Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin – Erik Larson

6.    Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How a Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved out an Empire in the New World – Edward Kritzler

7.    Leeway Cottage: A novel – Beth Gutcheon

8.    Lest Innocent Blood be Shed – Philip Hallie

9.    Miriam’s Kitchen – Elizabeth Ehrlich

10. My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Family’s Past – Ariel Sabar

11. Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout

12. Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books – Aaron Lansky

13. Raquela: A Woman of Israel – Ruth Gruber

14. Rashi’s Daughter: A Novel of Love and the Talmud in Medieval France – Maggie Anton

15. Sarah’s Key – Tatiana de Rosnay

16. Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen - David Sax

17. Saving Monticello: The Levy Family’s Epic Quest to Rescue the House that Jefferson Built – Marc Leepson

18. Start Up Nation: The History of Israel’s Economic Miracle – Dan Senor and Saul Singer

19. The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession and the Pursuit of an Ancient Bible – Matti Friedman

20. The Bee Season – Myla Goldberg

21. The Book Thief – Markus Zisak

22. The Girl from Foreign: A Memoir - Sadia Shepard

23. The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler & Changed the World – Kati Marton

24. The Hare with the Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance – Edmund de Waal

25. The Invisible Bridge – Julie Orringer

26. The Invisible Wall: A Love Story that Broke Barriers – Harry Bernstein

27. The Jew Store – Stella Suberman

28. The Last Jew – by Noah Gordan

29. The Last Secret of the Temple – Paul Sussman

30. The Man in the While Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World – Lucette Lagnado

31. The Ministry of Special Cases – Nathan Englander

32. The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life – Tom Reiss

33. The Seventh Telling: The Kabbalah of Moshe Katan – Mitchell Chefitz

34. The Virginia Plan: William Thalhimer and a Rescue from Nazi Germany -Robert Gillette

35. The World to Come – Dara Horn

36. The Year of Living Biblically – A.J. Jacobs

37. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union – Michael Chabon

38. This is My God – Herman Wouk

39. Tiger in the Attic: Memories of the Kindertransport & Growing Up English  - Edith Milton

     Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Rose

Why do we say, “Marriages are made in Heaven?”

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It’s the month of JUNE, and as the song from the musical “Carousel” says, “June is Bustin’ Out all Over.”  There is something so “ripe” about June. And, of course, in America June is “wedding month.” There are bridal magazines peering out at us from the racks at CVS, and no fewer than twenty-four wedding reality TV shows covering everything from destination weddings to honeymoon expectations, from chocolate fountains to wedding cake assembly.  How easy it is to lose focus on what really matters given the hoopla and hype of the average Jewish – American wedding.

How do you make holy this most intimate of Jewish rituals, the union of two people, two souls, two destinies that will merge with the recitation of seven blessings, some carefully chosen words repeated after the rabbi, and the gift of a gold band.  How can a couple deepen the experience?  I suggest dipping into the well of Jewish spirituality and mythology.

According to the Zohar, a mystical Jewish text, all souls are initially both male and female.  However when they are born into this world, the male and female parts of the soul go their separate ways, the male soul to dwell in a male body and the female soul to dwell in a female body.  If they are worthy, they will unite in marriage, restoring their original unity.  That is why a person’s loved one is called a soul mate, for together they form a single unit in every way: body and soul.

This myth answers the question of what God has been doing since he completed the creation of the world! He has been making matches, and each one is a difficult task, even for GOD! This makes God a shadkhan – a matchmaker. (Like Yenta in “Fiddler on the Roof”)  This myth also explains the Jewish concept of Bashert, in which it is believed that each person has a beshert or destined one, and that the match was made in heaven. 

This week I will have the honor of officiating at what is often called a “Renewal of Vows” ceremony.  (In the case of a Jewish couple, this isn’t quite right since the Jewish marriage service DOES NOT include an exchange of vows.) This couple has been married for forty years, and they will stand under the chuppah (wedding canopy) once again as a bride and groom.  I LOVE officiating at this kind of ceremony…whether it is forty, fifty or sixty years since the couple first walked down the aisle, with loving parents on either side accompanying first the groom and then the bride, to the chuppah.  These loving parents had prayed to God at birth and at Bar Mitzvah, to live long enough to bring their children to the wedding canopy and their prayers had been answered.

Watching couples who are making that return trip to the wedding canopy, be it forty, or fifty or sixty years later, it is obvious to all in attendance that God has once again, forged the perfect match, the perfect shidach, reuniting the two halves that were destined, intended, to make a perfect union.  Watching the glow that only seems to come with age, like a fine patina on a treasured piece of jewelry, the words of the Creation story are reflected in their eyes.

“The Lord God said, “It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him.”  So the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon the man; and while he slept, he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that spot.  The Lord God fashioned the rib that he had taken from the man into a woman; and he brought her to the man.  Then the man said, “This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.  This one shall be called woman, for from man was she taken.”  Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh.”

Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Rose

There is a Difference Between Counting Jews and Making Jews Count!

The Book of Numbers, which we commence reading this Shabbat, begins with a census.  There needs to be an accounting by tribe of men of military age if the Jews are to move forward and “take” the land that God promised them. (Your Sunday School teachers may have glossed over the gory battles the Israelites fought on their way to the Promised Land!) In case you are wondering, the total was about 600,000 men of military age.

Yep, we’ve been counting Jews for what seems like… an eternity! The Pharaoh in Egypt added them up and decided there were too many, so he enslaved them and ordered their male children to be killed. The Romans were busy counting Jews in the time of Jesus.  We know that Hitler methodically counted Jews, thanks to IBM, and he even gave each one a number.

We count Jews historically, geographically, denominationally, politically, and we can even churn out statistical information on Jews and disease!  Jewish Demography has evolved into a formal academic sub-specialty.  (I counted Jews back when I worked at the University of Miami.) Trust me, it was easier to count Jews back in the desert… fewer tribes, only one denomination – Israelite! Quantifying level of observance wasn’t an issue either as Moses and Aaron pretty much set the standard. You didn’t have to ask the Jews in the desert if they “self-identified” as a Jew… but you DO have to ask in America.

What about MODERN Jewish Demography? Let me hit you with some numbers:

World Wide Jewish Population

1939 - 16,728,000

1945 - 11,000,000

2012 - 13,746,100

Current Demographic Information – Israel and some Diaspora Communities

Israel                       5,901,100

United States           5,425,000

France                        480,000

Canada                       375,000

United Kingdom        291,000

Argentina                   181,800

South Africa                67,000

Australia                    112,000

New Zealand                 7,500

As they say, numbers don’t lie. And numbers are extremely important today, as Israel comes to grips with the reality that, not only are more Jews living OUTSIDE of Israel than INSIDE, but that the belief of the Zionist Founders of a massive and total immigration has not happened!  The “yearning” for Jerusalem… “NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM” – for many is a metaphorical desire…or maybe just a directive to call your travel agent and book a tour.  Many Jews in the Diaspora are content to live as they wish and practice Judaism as they choose to define it.

What we are seeing both in Israel and in the Diaspora, is a struggle to “commandeer” Jewish identity.  If Israel chooses to take the hardline Orthodox path of defining “Jewishness” in the State of Israel, then the Nation of Israel will, bit by bit, erode support of Diaspora Jews for the State of Israel.  We can already see this starting to happen here in the United States, where young Jews are forging their own Jewish Identity separate from the constraints of organized religion. We also see that many Jews in America no longer establish a strong emotional or financial bond with the State of Israel.

This past week, a special and very modern holiday was observed in Israel. It is called YOM YERUSHALYIM and commemorates the reunification of the City of Jerusalem in 1967. The IDF Paratroopers risked their lives that day and recaptured the Western Wall of the Temple, Judaism’s most holy and longed for place.  Very recently, six of those paratroopers returned to the Wall, this time in support of the rights of women who wished to pray, in their own way, at the Wall. As one of the paratroopers stated, “We liberated Jerusalem and the Wall for ALL Jews, not just SOME Jews.”

They say there is safety in numbers. How Israel chooses to forge a new relationship with Diaspora Jews is still unknown, but the status quo can only weaken the bond.  Jews of the Diaspora have always stood by Israel in times of trouble.  It remains to be seen whether they can stand by her in times of peace. For Israel to believe that she can count on every Jew, in the Diaspora, every Diaspora Jew must know that he or she truly counts!

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rose

I CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP - Jerusalem court holds that women praying out loud in prayer shawls do not disturb the public order

You might have seen them on the nightly news, those Torah Readin’, Tefillin’ Wearin’, Tallis Totin’, Prayer Provocateurs … The Women of the Wall!

“In a groundbreaking ruling, the Jerusalem District Court upheld an earlier decision of the magistrate’s court that women who wear prayer shawls (“tallitot” in Hebrew) at the Western Wall Plaza are not contravening “local custom” or causing a public disturbance, and therefore should not be arrested. "(Jerusalem Post, April 25, 2013)

I’m not sure how long this new ruling will be upheld, but it is a nice start.  Up until this ruling, Ultra-Orthodox rabbis who have worked hard to ban Jewish women from wearing tallitot while praying audibly and from reading Torah publicly at the Western Wall, had had the law on their side.  So, every month, at the celebration of the New Moon, the Women of the Wall would arrive to pray, wearing tallitot and carrying a Torah Scroll.  And police would arrive, to “break it up” and cart the “perps” off to jail. 

The logic ran something like this: The area in front of the Kotel (Western Wall) is a synagogue. Since only Orthodox Judaism is acknowledged in Israel, the synagogue is, by default, Orthodox, and under Orthodox rabbinical supervision, the customs and traditions of the Orthodox should be observed.  That being the case, women must dress modestly, may not wear a prayer shawl, are not permitted to touch or read from the Torah.  They may pray, but their voices are not to stand out as a distraction.  And the sexes must be separated.

Me and the Kotel go back a ways.  Sure, I’d seen those old Ottoman prints, and the 1967 iconic photograph of Israeli Paratroopers who had just liberated Jerusalem.  You probably know the photo, three young, rugged faces, blackened from battle, looking up at The Wall.

Back then, it was 1969, the plaza before the Wall was a pretty empty space, except for Friday night, which brought out the Yeshiva boys in big numbers for singing and dancing. It was a simpler time. There were no “check points” or bag searches or metal detectors. A low, metal fence separated the men from the women… but we could see each other.  A woman stood, at the entrance to the “women’s side” with a basket of long skirts with elastic waists.  These were for both modesty and propriety. After all, a female tourist wouldn’t enter a holy Christian site without first covering her bare arms and SHORTS!

Back then the experience was so intimate.  One could touch the stone, literally “talk to the Wall” and to leave a message tucked in a crevice between two stones.  After my first visit, I walked over to the excavation next to the Wall, lowered myself down a ladder and started my first day of “digging” through the Ottoman Empire.

Things have changed since then. Now, there always seems to be a tumult at the Kotel. The Wall had been liberated, but for whom?  Gone are the old women pressing their lips to the stone in silent petition.  Replacing the holy aura is a phalanx of soldiers and police forming a security barricade. Military and medical vehicles line up awaiting the unthinkable. Peering down on the plaza are “billboards” carved in Jerusalem stone with signs for yeshivot, and ads for Bar Mitzvahs at the wall. The two ‘sides’ of the Kotel (His and Hers) are now divided by a taller, solid, barrier.  This doesn’t stop the Orthodox women from watching the men on the other side.  They simply line up plastic chairs and peer over the mehitza!

God Bless Israel.  If there wasn’t infighting and bickering I’d be worried that it ISN’T a Jewish State, after all, being divisive is what we do best!

But the truly dark side to all of this is that while we are bickering over the handling and “ownership” of what WE JEWS consider the undisputed spiritual home of the Jews, the Western Wall of the Temple, the rest of the world is being sold a different story.

According to the Palestinian National Authority, the Jews did not consider the Wall as a place of worship until the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917.  The Palestinian Authority appointed Mufti of Jerusalem believes that the Wall belongs to Muslims alone.  In a statement made in 2000 he said “No stone of the Al-Buraq (the Muslim name for The Western Wall) has any relation to Judaism.  The Jews began praying at this wall only in the nineteenth century, when they began to develop [national] aspirations.”

In 2001 in an interview with the German magazine, Die Welt, (January 17, 2001) he followed up with this statement “There is not a single stone in the Wailing Wall relating to Jewish History. The Jews cannot legitimately claim this wall, neither religiously nor historically. The Committee of the League of Nations recommended in 1930, to allow the Jews to pray there, in order to keep them quiet. But by no means did it acknowledge that the wall belongs to them.”

As American Jews we may choose to distance ourselves and “tune out” the internal machinations of Israeli politics and religion.  But as Jewish Americans, we must be alert and “tune in” to international dialogues and policies that serve to contort the truth.

As the timeless joke goes – the old Jew prays at the Wall every day, three times a day, for 20 years.  When asked what this experience was like, he answered, “It’s like talking to a WALL.”

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rose