August 30th: Re’eh
THIS WEEK IN THE TORAH
Rabbi David E. Ostrich
Though Jerusalem was the capital of ancient Israel—both politically with King David and his descendants and religiously with the Temple of the Lord, it is not mentioned in the Torah. In the Torah, there is only a vague mention of a “place where the Lord shall make the Holy Name dwell,” but the specific location is not mentioned. Even if God had Jerusalem in mind as the eventual and permanent place of holiness, it took our ancient ancestors a number of centuries to get around to the Mount Zion and the Temple Mount and the City we have considered holy for some three thousand years.
When the Israelites enter the Promised Land (around 1200 BCE), they continue with the Mishkan, the portable “tent temple” described in Exodus and which they carried with them during their forty years of wandering in the wilderness. The Mishkan stayed in various locations for a number of years—the most famous of them being Shiloh., but, with the reign of King David and the establishment of Jerusalem as his capital, the Ark and Mishkan were moved to Jerusalem where David’s son Solomon eventually built the Temple—sometime in the 900’s BCE.
From here on out, this was the place of God’s holiness and the fulfillment of the mitzvah we read in this week’s Torah portion: “After you traverse the Jordan and dwell in the land which the Lord your God gives you to inherit, and when God gives you rest from all your enemies round about, so that you dwell in safety; then there shall be a place which the Lord your God shall choose to cause the Holy Name to dwell; there shall you bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, your tithes, and the offering of your hand, and all your choice vows which you vow to the Lord: and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you, your sons and your daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levite who is within your gate…” (Deuteronomy 12.10-12)
Jerusalem has remained our religious capital ever since. When the Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, the people of Judah yearned to return (see Psalms 137 and 126) and then rebuilt the Temple when the Persians allowed them to reestablish Judah and Jerusalem. Then, when the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE, the yearning reignited AND the resulting post-Temple prayer worship continued to focus on Jerusalem. In constant mentions and even in physical attitude—directing our prayers to the Temple Mount, Jerusalem, and the Holy Temple—“the place where the Lord chose to make the Divine Name dwell”—have been the closest place to heaven on earth, the place which offers the best access to God.
For centuries, Jews would make pilgrimage to the remnants of the ancient Temple, getting as close as they could be by praying at the Western Wall, the remnants of the retailing wall that surrounded the Temple Mount and made a mountain into a plaza for the Holy Temple. Then, after the 1967 Six Day War, when Israel captured the Old City, the Western Wall/Kotel Hama’ariv became a place of celebration and a place where more and more Jews could come close to the ancient holiness.
It was by a quirk of bureaucratic fate that the Western Wall came under the control of the Ministry of the Interior—which controls synagogues—and not the Ministry of Antiquities. Classified as a synagogue instead of an archeological site, the area became the province of the Orthodox rabbinate—and thus the many conflicts began: men’s and women’s sections, no organized services or Torah readings on the women’s side, no non-Orthodox religious services, hassles about archeological excavations at the site, etc.
Back in 1996, I was part of a Reform Rabbi’s Mission to Israel, one where, among other things, we met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to get him to give Reform Judaism more funding and respect. We also had a worship service in the Kotel Plaza—the large and mixed plaza just outside of the segregated men’s and women’s sections. We were “at” the Kotel, just a few dozen meters farther. We were some forty Reform Rabbis, men and women, and we began to pray. There were some ultra-Orthodox protesters who tried screaming and falling to the ground to get the attention of some Israeli news cameras. We were told that ours was the first “mixed” service at the Kotel. The protesters were unable to break up the service because the government has also provided several armed soldiers who guarded us as we prayed.
I remember one of the colleagues, a young female rabbi, expressing her comfort at the fact that we were being guarded and could continue our prayers. My reaction was different. I felt very distracted and very unconnected, and I wondered why this ancient wall was so important. It is not as though we Jews have not achieved an incredible spiritual tradition while living and praying in other places. Were we to think that our prayers, some thirty meters from the Kotel, were somehow holier than the prayers uttered by Jews in Babylonia or Cairo or Warsaw or in Mayence? Were we to think that prayers in this place were somehow closer to the omnipresent God Whose dominion is in the whole universe?
There is nonetheless something special about the Kotel, and I visit it and pray every time I’m in Jerusalem. I yearn for the special closeness to God that Tradition ascribes to the holy precinct, but I also realize that the notion of God only being present in one place is not as true as some of our ancient ancestors believed. As Judah Halevi prayerfully wrote:
“O Lord, where shall I find Thee, hid is Thy lofty place?
And where shall I not find Thee, Whose glory fills all space?
ho formed the world, abideth within man’s soul alway;
Refuge to them that seek Thee, ransom for them that stray.
O, how can mortals praise Thee, when angels strive in vain?
O build for Thee a dwelling, Whom worlds cannot contain?
Longing to draw near Thee, with all my heart I pray,
Then going forth to seek Thee, Thou meetest me on the way.
I find thee in the marvels of Thy creative might,
In visions in Thy Temple, in dreams that bless the night.
Who saith he hath not seen Thee? The heavens refute his word.
Their hosts declare Thy glory, though never voice be heard.”