Calm

The thing that I like most about Women of the Wall is the walk to get there. There are no buses that take you from Mount Scopus to the Old City; you have to go to Jaffa Rd and then walk from there. This means that a trip to the Kotel involves walking all the way through the Old City at a time of morning when nothing’s open and no one’s there. All the shops that are usually open are closed, all the streets that are usually crowded are completely empty. It’s peaceful. And then you arrive at the Kotel and see all these men and women davening, and all these police cars parked right outside the guard station, and you’re ready to pray. You’re ready to combat the Haredim with your prayer, your love for their hate.

This entry is not really about Women of the Wall, though. I am currently lying on a bed at Kibbutz Yahel, a Reform kibbutz in the Negev, taking a few precious moments between dinner and our campfire. This Shabbat seems to be about a similar kind of calm. We’re out of the city and into the desert, where there’s really nothing around us other than lots of sand, a bit of grass, and the people who live on the kibbutz. I’m also singing and listening to songs that I haven’t heard since camp, and other songs that I haven’t heard since AHA—and even without the words in the book (because Mishkan Tefila was written as a prayerbook, not a songbook), somehow I still remember the words to these songs I haven’t heard since 2001. It’s the peace of nostalgia that I’m feeling right now; even though I know I was never really happy at camp, these songs bring back fond feelings. I came on this Shabbaton because it was a chance to take a Shabbat away from Jerusalem, but I think instead I’m refinding Reform Judaism. Not that I’m going to come away from this Shabbaton a Reform Jew—I’m not—but I’m reminding myself that there are parts that I really like, parts that I really loved as a little kid, and maybe I can recall those images when I think of Reform Judaism rather than thinking of congregations that do yartzeits based on English dates and close down for the summer.