The Messiness of Being Here

Wednesday morning the beginning of the new month of Av in the Jewish calendar and here in Jerusalem - where I am for a Rabbinic Seminar - it is a special moment to pray at the Western Wall which is the archaeologically attested oldest historical Jewish site. It is the outer western wall of the site of the Temple where until its destruction in 70 CE was the central place for sacrifices and worship by my ancestors, the Jewish people.

For a number of years now, there has been a group of women who have met on the morning of the new moon to pray together at this holy site.

I joined the Women of the Wall yesterday.

The experience started at 7am when I joined the queue to pass through security to enter the plaza.

The women’s section is separated from the men’s section and the women’s entrance is separated from the men’s entrance.

To the side of the women’s entrance was another entrance, and, despite the sign saying entry to the Har HaBayit - the Temple Mount - is strictly forbidden, a constant stream of men and boys were politely requesting we move aside so they could go up that ramp and pray their prayers for the new moon on the plaza above, on which now stands the Al Aqsa mosque.

Waiting to pass through security. If you zoom in you can see the sign forbidding people to go up to the Temple Mount. The wall to the right is plastered with images of young Israeli men who have lost their lives on and since October 7 2023.

One by one, we entered the plaza and found the other women who had already started the morning prayers. We were greeted and welcomed and given prayer books and many women were wearing tallitot, the traditional Jewish prayer shawls, and some were wearing tefillin, the traditional casings holding a central prayer that are attached to the head and the arm for morning prayer.

We joined the throng, aware that there were small groups of girls, surrounding us, separated by security guards, who were obviously not there to join our prayers.

They were there to disrupt them.

Tactics were to shout and blow whistles and scream to disrupt us. Some of the more seasoned Women of the Wall women had earplugs to in order to block out the noise, and continue with their prayers.

It was very difficult to do this without the earplugs.

The truth was, I was there to, quoting Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, pray with my feet:

I know my Judaism, I know my Jewish history, and there is no reason why a group of women should not be allowed to do what they want to do there and my presence, my protective presence - a phrase that is used here in many different contexts now - my intention for my presence there was to strengthen and support these brave defiant beautiful women of the wall.

And I found I was asking myself what really is the difference between what I was doing, and the men in their knitted kippot (head covering) asserting their right to pray at a different part of the ancient Temple site? Ok I though, this one was easy: What I was doing was clearly within the bounds of the laws of the State of Israel, and the other, theirs, is not and isn’t even in the bounds of mainstream Jewish Law either.

But it’s not so straight forward (of course); what if it does become illegal for the women to pray at the Kotel? Surely we would want to fight it, to stand up for our rights, to change the injustice. What if that’s how those men felt as they very politely asked us to move aside as they made their way up the ramp to pray?

And thus we enter yet another (the whole week has been filled with different examples of this question) entry point into the thinking around what is the State of Israel standing for, on what values is it built, who is it standing for, and what is my role in it, as a British Judaism-led Jewish leader?

Standing at the taxi rank afterwards, looking at the wall filled with stickers of so many young Israeli men - soldiers - who’ve lost their lives these last four years, I couldn’t help but feel like I had one foot on ancient ancient land and one foot on a very modern, contemporary capital city in the middle of a war.

So it’s messy.

A phrase that does not even begin to capture the feelings and reflections I have from being here this past week.

I have written and reflected many times about the value for me of morning prayer practice setting the tone for the day and taking time to set intentions and feel grounded before facing the world, and yesterday was a total reversal of that: my morning prayer practice set the tone in that it has taken the whole of the rest of the day to process and unravel my feelings about it all.

And the day happened, we had, again, inspiring and thought-provoking and deep wisdom from the teaching at the Hartman Institute, and amazing conversations with rabbis at the top of their game.

And last night was the semi-final of the World Cup in which England faced Argentina. So the UK delegation (just five of us) headed to a bar area where the match was being shown, to settle in and unwind and relax enjoying the beautiful game.

We grabbed the table, and where I was sitting I had a brilliant view of the screen, right at the front, and whilst we were waiting to start, I chatted with the people around me. A small group of men who it turned out were yeshivabochers (full time Torah students after their army service) and despite my internal reservation, when I told them we were a group of rabbis from England (most of us women), they continued to talk and we had good banter about our predictions for the match. They supported Argentina, we were obviously supporting England, and, with a beer in hand, it was jovial and fun.

The match started, and England scored the first goal. I got up from my seat in ecstasy cheering and I turned around and realised we were in the absolute minority as the stone faced is Israelis stayed in their seats.

You can imagine how this evolved.

The first Argentinian goal was as if we were in a fan zone in Buenos Aires, and for the second goal, they just erupted.

I found myself for the second time that day the focus of attention for being in a minority. I found myself again feeling connected in a way that I just don’t feel in England, and yet also set apart, different, in a contemporary context too.

And as the match ended, and they chanted, “Messi! Messi! Messi!” I thought to myself, yes - being here is most certainly … messy.