Jerusalem
27 October 2011
I’ve been here—to the kotel—several times before. Today I’m drawn to the hundreds, thousands of
tiny scraps of paper—prayers—folded and tucked into every imaginable
crack. The wall is huge, its rocks giant
and old. Some remain from the old
temple’s ancient days. In the larger
seams between stones, dozens and dozens of these prayers are wedged
together. In smaller holes, one or two
are all that fit. It makes for quite a
sight: a huge wall, decorated with thousands of prayers. It almost seems as if the prayers themselves
are holding the old wall together.
Jewish friends remind me that when these prayers are
collected—as they are from time to time—they cannot be burned. They bear, after all, the name of God,
petitioning the Divine for peace or the health of friends or the safety of
children. As they’re gathered, then,
they are given a kind of Jewish burial, honoring their intention and the holy
longing of the souls who penned them.
Something else strikes me today. And it has to do with the importance of the
written word. Here’s a holy site—one of
the holiest—and it’s held together by words, prayers, texts scrawled (sometimes
hastily, sometimes not) on little bits of paper.
Words, texts.
Where would Judaism be, or Christianity, or Islam—without words and
texts? Like the text (from Genesis) in
which God directs Abraham to a ram in a thicket: No longer will you sacrifice
human life on this mountain. Like the
prophetic text that rings across the prophetic pages of Hebrew Scripture: Beat
your swords into ploughshares! Study war
no more! Like the strange call to
forgiveness we hear again and again in the gospels: Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do.
In Jerusalem, Jerusalem, a remarkable
meditation on religion and violence, James Carroll explores the meaning of
violence in the biblical record. He has
this to say about the biblical impulse itself:
“Israel’s uneasiness about violence is what generates not only the
bible, but Israel’s dynamic and ever-evolving understanding of God. That is why violence is so prominent in the
bible: because violence is the problem it is addressing. Across 1000 years, the human conscience began
to reject what human life had always apparently required, and the record of
that rejection is the bible.”
Strangely, that’s what I see now, when I look up at
all these tiny bits of paper, pressed tightly into the western wall. I see ancient storytellers passing on the
story of Abraham’s non-sacrifice of Isaac.
I see Isaiah and Micah insisting on beating swords into
ploughshares. I see Jesus challenging
followers to forgive not seven times—but seventy times seven. Scraps of paper, texts, words. Each one a question opening into mystery,
wonder, compassion.
Not everyone reads scripture this way, of course. I know that.
So often we turn to scripture for justification: my way, not your way;
my people, not your people; my wall, not your wall. But I stand at this wall and wonder if story
and wonder might not unlock a different future here. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall
be called children of God.”
