The Holiest Place at the Holiest Time

This past Shabbos, I merited to participate in another unique Israeli experience: Friday night at the Kosel.

I had heard plenty about what it would be like from various friends and family members, both from a spiritual standpoint, as well as the more mundane aspect of seeing so many different people from so many different walks of life all in one place. But nothing could have prepared me for the awesome experience it turned out to be.

I heard from a friend of mine that unfortunately, there are bochurim who have been learning in Israel for ages, and yet they have never gone to the Kosel - not just Friday night, but even during the week as well. "Yeah, I'll make sure to go before I go back to America," they say. These poor souls have no idea what they're missing. Going to the Kosel is always a special experience for me - even if not for the spiritual aspect of it, then at least for the "sightseeing" aspect. Some day, these poor souls are gonna to the Kosel, and then they're gonna kick themselves - hard - for all the missed opportunities they could have had to go, but instead gave it up for total narishkeiten.

But enough about them - let's get back to my story. I started out Friday afternoon, pretty close to Shabbos, looking for a cab to the Kosel. Not knowing which of the main streets in the neighborhood would be the best place to flag down a cab at that time, I asked a more experienced friend: "Where's the best place to get a cab now?"

"New York City," was his reply. It turned out he wasn't kidding. If you wait too close to Shabbos, you'll find very few cabs - possibly only Arabs, which is not exactly the most reassuring form of transportation. Armed with 30 Shekels, I headed toward Shmuel Hanavi. With Hashem's help, I found a Jewish (albeit non-frum) cab driver who was willing to take me for 25 shekels, but only as far as Sha'ar Yaffo. It was better than nothing, so I took the offer, figuring I would deposit the remaining 5 shekels in the pushka at the Kosel before shkia.

The driver dropped me off just up the hill from Sha'ar Yaffo, barely waiting for me to exit the cab before racing off again. Not wanting to walk through potentially hostile territory alone (not to mention that I did not know the way at all), I asked two Israeli bochurim who were heading there anyway if I could walk with them. I needn't have worried, though, since we ended up being part of a group of roughly 50 people, all walking to the Kosel.

My "guides" elected to take the shorter route, cutting directly through the Arab shuk. I would have been quite apprehensive of doing so alone, but I guess there is something to be said for the power in numbers - the Arabs were not about to start up with a group of 50 people. I was kind of glad we went through the shuk: I have to admit, it was a fascinating trek. The shuk is basically an alley just a few feet wide - so narrow, in fact, that the awnings over the shops on either side were often overlapping each other, creating the illusion that we were walking through a tunnel. Dozens of shops line the alley on either side, selling all kinds of merchandise: hot food, clothing, hand-carved wooden chess sets, silver-plated shofars, fresh and dried fruits, nuts, baseball caps, scarves - you name it, all in a bright cornucopia of colors, shapes, sizes, and smells. I only wish I would have come at some time other than mere minutes before the onset of Shabbos, when I would have been able to slow down and look around a bit.

After proceeding through the shuk for a while, turning the occasional corner, we finally reached the Kosel security checkpoint. I thanked my "guides" as we patiently waited in line among the throngs of people waiting to pass through the metal detector. I finally got through security, and headed out of the security booth to the top of the staircase leading down to the Kosel plaza.

Have you ever felt like you wanted to laugh and cry at the same time? That's a bit of what I felt like at the sight that greeted my eyes: there was my beloved Kosel, but somehow, it was not the same as I had seen it before. There was something different about it, something special. The arrival of the holiest day of the week to the holiest place in the world, filled with people of the holiest nation was perhaps the formula that comprised the special feeling that seemed to permeate the very air.

I proceeded down the stairs, put my remaining 5 shekels in the pushka, and headed across the plaza to the Kosel, joining the crowds of people at the Wall. There were literally thousands of people there, from all walks of life - chasidish and litvish, ashkenazim and sefardim, frum and non-frum. There were young teenagers with ponytails or Mohawks and backpacks the size of telephone booths, older tourists wearing cardboard yarmulkes with expensive cameras around their necks - an assortment of humanity that a cross-culture integrator could only dream of.

As I got closer to the Wall, the composition of the crowd shifted more toward the serious kind: aside from the occasional ponytailed spirituality-seeker clinging to the Wall, the people were mostly religious people going about the sacred ritual of welcoming the Shabbos. That's not to say the crowd became stereotyped at this point: on the contrary, there were many different minyanim, davening according to different nuscha'os, from chasidish to mizrachi. Perhaps the largest was the Vizhnitz minyan, occupying the leftmost twenty percent or so of the Kosel. Although I actually davened in the minyan next to them, I nevertheless immensely enjoyed overhearing their davening. Actually, it would have been kind of hard not too - especially their rendition of Lecha Dodi, sung by everyone in the minyan together with a sweetness that could probably not be matched by any earthly sound.

After I finished davening, I joined up with my host and his sons, and we headed back toward Arzei Habira, taking the route through Sha'ar Shechem. If anything this route was even more dangerous, but like I said before, there's something to be said for the power in numbers, and we were far from alone.

After the seudah, as I walked back to my dira, my mind inevitably began to wander. I thought of everything I had seen that night, of how Jews from all walks of life - from the most devout chasid to the simplest non-frum tourist - had all joined together for one single purpose: to visit the House of Hashem. Even those who only came to the Kosel merely as a tourist destination surely felt something, the feeling of the pintele yid longing to return to its source. That's what a saw: a melting pot, a potpourri of elementally pure souls, all yearning to somehow, in some way, do the right thing. All yearning to come home.

May we be zoche to see the fulfillment of that yearning speedily in our days.