Exactly one week ago, our rented Kia—struggling a bit, I’ll admit—climbed the Jerusalem hills as we made our ascent into the city. While investment in infrastructure over the last two decades means that arrival is a bit less dramatic—we could no longer see the Old City walls appearing between the modern buildings—my umpteenth arrival feels no less miraculous to me than my first. And, of course, to bring my children to this city was even more emotional than I expected, though it is possible that if you ask them, the ice cream and time with friends might stick with them as much as seeing the Kotel for the first time.
Our wonderful tour guide, a dear friend of many friends, started our day in the Old City with words from Psalms. Standing inside the Jaffa Gate, just up the stairs from the luxury mall of Mamilla, she and my children recited Psalm 122, known as Samachti B’Omri Li:
A song of ascents. Of David. I rejoiced when they said to me,
“We are going to the House of the LORD.”
Our feet stood inside your gates, O Jerusalem
But, as I reflect on this most recent visit—and my children’s first—I am struck that the ice cream and the time with friends and the mundane realities of life in Jerusalem are, in many ways, as significant as the Kotel. It is, after all, those banal moments—of needing to buy conditioner, or running into the market for milk because we ran out, or meeting friends for dinner at the bustling First Station—that is the stuff of actual, 21st-century life in Jerusalem.
I have guided many groups to Israel, and almost always share the words of Yehuda Amichai, who wrote of tourists:
Once I sat on the steps by a gate at David’s Tower,
I placed my two heavy baskets at my side. A group of tourists
was standing around their guide and I became their target marker. “You see
that man with the baskets? Just right of his head there’s an arch
from the Roman period. Just right of his head.” “But he’s moving, he’s moving!”
I said to myself: redemption will come only if their guide tells them,
“You see that arch from the Roman period? It’s not important: but next to it,
left and down a bit, there sits a man who’s bought fruit and vegetables for his family.”
As I walked the streets of Jerusalem, old and new, I gave thanks—truly—for the arches from the Roman period and the man buying fruits and vegetables for his family. For both are part of the miracle of Jewish history, Jewish life, and the Jewish future. And we are, miraculously, a part of all of it.
—Rabbi Sari Laufer