By Andrea Sragg Simantov, Jerusalem Diaries
A few Friday nights ago I was invited to attend a curious dinner in the Old City of Jerusalem. The popular Chabad rabbi who issued the invitation is quite well known in his native Los Angeles, and his equally Lubavitch daughter and son-in-law sponsor very energetic community meals in the associated Jerusalem center. Never mind how I got to be there; I was delighted to have been invited.
Because I live an approximately 40-minute walk from the Rovah (Old City/Four Quarters) and do not ride in cars on the Sabbath, I opted to take a cab to the Kotel (Western Wall) before sunset and to walk home after the festivities. I had never been to the Wall on a Friday night and found the experience not to my liking. It was a wildly frenetic and not altogether spiritual scene and appeared to be, largely, an English-speaking social gabfest at nearly every turn. I felt cheated out of the contemplative aura that the onset of Shabbos typically ensures from the moment I light my eight candles. Most personally disturbing was that I found myself not in my usual state of loving my fellow Jew but, instead, doing what I find most distasteful in others: judging. I was not proud of these angry, critical feelings, and, in order to get a grip, I stole away to a quiet corner, away from the courtyard and prayed by myself. When I later looked up from my prayer book, it was with a grateful sense of pleasure and delight in my fellow man.
The dinner crowd was imbued with newly-religious joy and I wanted some of that for myself but feared appearing disingenuous. Everyone in the room spoke a few words in turn and the theme was pretty consistent: the near rapture of spending a Sabbath in Jerusalem where Jews have been praying for thousands of years and yearning to visit for those same millennia, and how they had either just made aliyah (immigrated) or were counting the days until they made aliyah. These beautiful sentiments resonated with me because, quite frankly, they are mine, but on this night I felt little. I had heard it all before.
I found myself wondering just who in the crowd would be man/woman enough to let this moment’s passion seed until it became a plant that could, ultimately, be uprooted from the near-irresistible fleshpots of Los Angeles and Boca Raton, from where many of the evening’s guests hailed. Not too many, I wagered. Valiantly fighting cynicism, I befriended the rebbetzin to my left who, in addition to being devoutly religious, had a good dose of good-natured pepper in her belly. She was funny and well informed while uncompromising in her religiosity. I knew that time would not allow us to become truly connected but, nevertheless, relished the opportunity to share this life-flash with such a delightful person. Coincidentally, she knew my earliest Talmud Torah teacher and sadly informed me of his passing. I left the sumptuous dinner after the post-meal prayer and felt energized by the thought of a brisk walk home to burn off those extra calories. I had met a man at the Chabad house who lived close to me, and this ensured that I wouldn’t be alone during the midnight trek.
But lo and behold, as we were entering the Armenian Quarter, swarms of people came toward us from the direction we were heading, shouting, Turn back. They’ve closed all the gates. There was a shooting. Where? I asked, but there was little information available. Apparently, the unprovoked attack on two border policemen at Lions Gate on the eastern side of the Old City had occurred only moments before, and the police were, understandably, very tense. [Ed. One of the guards, age 19, has since died of his wounds.]
Mark and I pushed against the tide of people, figuring that when we were finally let out, it would be good to be near the gates rather than munching baklava deep in the Rovah. The scene we witnessed was similar to a Hollywood film set during a break-time for the extras. We found ourselves schmoozing with long-robed priests and black-clad yeshiva students, Russian tourists and Long Island seminary girls. Helicopters circled overhead, and police on magnificent steeds clopped on by. Blue lights and sirens preceded official government cars that darted over the narrow, cobblestone streets of the old city. The adjacent Arab kiosks opened their doors and sold drinks and cigarettes to anyone carrying cash and not observing the Sabbath, and the atmosphere was downright festive. It was hard to compute that there were two families suffering from the events that brought the rest of us together. A rabbi from a nearby yeshiva invited anyone who needed a drink or to use the restroom to, please, follow him.
For almost two hours we stood, mingled, talked, and got to know one another. I met a lovely grandmother, mother, and adult daughter from Cali, Columbia, who were close friends with a branch of my family that we had lost touch with at the beginning of the twentieth century. Because it was the Sabbath, I couldn’t write down any of the e-mail addresses that were given to me, but I employed previously dormant recall-skills and committed them all to memory. My rebbetzin friend from the dinner joined the crowd, and I was happy to see her again.
I am sometimes asked, “How can you live here?” by well-meaning people who read the headlines and imagine that terror and unrest are the things that define our lives. This question does not make me angry. I understand the questioner and give him the only answer I know: How can I not live here?
