Contradictions of the Kotel

The following originally appeared on the Gateways and Tents blog.  

When the American students spent an hour unpacking their experience of the kotel (the Western Wall), we heard a few common themes. One theme was the experience of cognitive dissonance—that is, the contradiction that occurs when your heart is telling you to feel one thing, and your brain is telling you to think a different thing.

On one level, this contradiction is confusing and troubling. Our head and heart want to be in sync. On another level, this contradiction may be a perfect reflection of the kotel—a place that is itself full of contradiction.

Here are a few of the kotel’s contradictions.

First, the kotel is a symbol that unites the Jewish people. Go into any synagogue around the world, and you’re likely to find a picture of the Western Wall. The site has become the icon of Jerusalem, the defining image of the city towards which Jews all over the world pray. And yet, thekotel is also a symbol that divides the Jewish people. The struggle over who has authority at the Western Wall is the example par excellence of the challenge of pluralism. In this public arena, competing Jewish value-systems literally go nose to nose to try and answer the question: What does it mean to be Jewish?

Second, the kotel is a holy site. Thousands of years ago, there stood the First and Second Temples, the sacred center of the Jewish people, where families from all over the Jewish world would come three times annually to offer sacrifices to God. Since the Temple’s destruction, the kotelhas remained a pilgrimage site—except now, the Jewish people go there to commune with God not through sacrifice, but through prayer. And yet, the kotel is also a secular site. The Western Wall itself never was holy. Rather, it was a retaining wall that held up the earth upon which the Holy Temple stood. It is less like the sanctuary of Shaaray Tefila and more like sidewalk outside the 79thStreet entrance.

Third, the kotel is a religious site. And yet, it is also a political site. The division of life into separate categories, such as religion and state, is an entirely modern invention.The Temple was the seat of religious and political authority in ancient Israel. It was not only a center for ritual and sacrifice, but also for adjudicating civil law and social policy. Bible scholars refer to the Torah as the “constitution of the ancient Jewish nation.” So too, the modern State of Israel is often described as the “Third Temple.” Israeli law defines the State as both “Jewish and democratic.” The tension between these two values is evident not just in the struggle for pluralism at the kotel, but in every aspect of Israeli society. (This tension is perhaps most evident inissues of personal status—marriage, divorce, conversion, and burial—currently under the authority of the rabbinate).

These three contradictions—unity and division, sacred and secular, religious and political—are at the heart of kotel. And somehow, each contradiction coheres.

So when I hear our students expressing cognitive dissonance—that their head thinks one thing and their heart a different thing—I am at once empathetic that they do not feel more whole, and at the same time believe that they are right where they should be. Their experience is a reflection of the kotel itself. And because of these contradictions, no two visits to the kotel will ever be the same. It is my hope, therefore, that each of our teens will come back and visit for a second, and a third, and a tenth, and a two-hundredth time, knowing that on each visit, the contradictions will express themselves differently.

It is said that one sign of genius is the ability to hold two contradictory truths at the same time. May we be able to hold all these truths for ourselves, and may the kotel—with all its capacity for contradiction—be able to hold a space for each of us.