In Taanit (30b) it says, “Those who mourn for Jerusalem will merit to see it in its joy.” This is derived from Isaiah 66:10, “Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her, all you who love her; join in her jubilation, all you who mourn for her.”

Last night I walked with a group from The Yeshiva to Kotel HaMasorti for ma’ariv and Eicha.

I said at the beginning of this trip that I would talk more about The Kotel. I suppose I shall do so now.

I have been to The Kotel proper twice. Once on birthright, and once the first day I was here. This is my experience of The Kotel. I see people walk up to the wall. They put their hands on it. They put their foreheads against it. They stand there for a while with their eyes closed. They pray. They cry. They come away slowly, sometimes walking backwards so as not to turn their backs on it. They come away talking about how powerful and moving the experience was.

I go to the Kotel. I look at these people. I walk up to the wall. I put my hand against it. It feels smooth, almost like plastic, from the wear of millions of fingers touching it as I am. I put my forehead against it. It feels like stone. I stand with my eyes closed. I wonder what I’m doing, what I’m supposed to be doing. I think of Papa Karl who, seeing how people push and shove and jostle to kiss the Torah when it is brought around the shul, would mutter under his breath “That’s right… kiss the magic box.” I stand there and remember that I’m surrounded by women. I stand there and I feel a little bit angry. I stand there and I feel a little bit sad. I stand there and mostly, I feel very little. What I do not feel, is God.

When I was a little girl and we were in a very scary car accident (in which, Baruch HaShem no one was injured) as we sat on the side of the mountain next to the smashed up rented minivan waiting for help to come to help us climb back up to the road we’d fallen off, my mother asked me if I wanted to pray. I said no. Why would I want to pray? It seemed a complete non sequitur.

Last night was… I guess nice is the word. We sat at the southern corner of the western retaining wall of the Temple Mount known as Robinson’s Arch because of the archway that used to be there which was part of a staircase leading up to the Temple that was discovered by Edward Robinson. What is visible now of the arch is a bit of a protrusion where it met the wall. The majority of the space next to the wall itself is roped off, as the ground is uneven and there are large stones piled around which have not been moved since they fell in 70 C.E. when the second Temple was destroyed. We sat and Eicha was read, a few words were said, a few songs were sung, and we concluded with HaTikvah.

When it was over, my friend Eitan suggested that we walk over to the platform to the left of the space where it is possible to access the wall itself. I decided that I should try again, in this different environment. We walked over. I watched as Eitan walked up to the wall, put his hands against it, put his head against it, and stood there. I walked up to the wall, touched it, stood staring at it for a moment, and realized that I wasn’t seeing anything. I walked over to the railing which overlooked the pile of rubble and the place where those still lingering after davenning were milling about. I looked down the wall. I looked at the pile of stones. I looked at the people. And I started to cry.

This past year, I walked downtown to where the World Trade Center used to be. This was the first time I went there on the 11th of September.

I grew up not observing Tisha B’Av. I told this to my flatmate today. “It was the single most tragic even to befall Am Yisrael. I can’t imagine just ignoring it.” I could only shrug. I know all the reasons not to observe, not to mourn, not to want a literal third Temple. I understand the evolution of Judaism and the sense that prayer is a more advanced form of worship than animal sacrifice. I tend to make a point of calling the religion of the Temple era “proto-Judaism” because it is more correct from a historical, semantic and evolutionary standpoint.

But really… to put it in a rather crude way, that’s a lot of eggs to go into an omlette.

I’m not going to pretend that I’ve got this all figured out. And I’m okay with that. I said the other day that I was trying not to think too hard. This is not true. I’m thinking just as hard, but I’m observing anyway. I’m making a conscious decision to think only in certain directions and not to be put on the defensive by my own questions or by the questions of others. I decided that today I was going to mourn the destruction of The Temple and the fall of Jerusalem and the scattering of my people. And I did. And I think it was the right thing for me to do.