I don’t connect to the Kotel. Not in the same way many others do.

There. I said it. Now let me explain before you report me to the rabbinate.

Every day, thousands of people press their lips and their tears against those ancient stones. They tuck folded prayers into the cracks. They kiss the limestone like it’s the face of God Himself. And I’ve stood there too. I’ve prayed there. I’ve felt something move in me there that I can’t explain away.

But here’s what I can’t stop thinking about: that wall was built by Herod. A paranoid, murderous tyrant of a king who slaughtered his own family to keep his throne. He didn’t build it as a place to pray. He built it as a retaining wall. Engineering, not holiness. A structure to hold up the platform he expanded for God’s home. It is, quite literally, a wall that holds up dirt.

So no, I don’t believe the stones themselves are holy. Holy-by-contact, yes, soaked in centuries of prayer and defended with Jewish blood. But that borrowed holiness isn’t the point.

What’s holy is the ground. The location. The place God Himself chose. The place about which God said “And now, I have chosen and........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)