Question of the Week:
I
am just back from my big trip to Israel. I thought I'd never get there.
I think it's the first Jewish thing I've done since my bar mitzvah
(which wasn't so Jewish either).
But here's
the weird part. I went to the Wall in Jerusalem, and you know me, I'm
the last person to have a "spiritual experience". But as I approached
the Wall I started to cry uncontrollably. I felt this strange magnetism
towards the Wall, almost as if G-d was pulling me. What do you think?
Not bad for an agnostic, huh?
Answer:
You have a powerful Jewish soul, and you caught a glimpse of its power at the Wall.
The
Wall is the last remnant of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. While
ransacking Jerusalem 2000 years ago, the Romans burnt the Temple, and
knocked down its stone walls. But one wall refused to budge, the Western
Wall. The sages predicted long ago that the Western Wall will never be
destroyed. It represents a holiness that no foreign power can ever
touch. They can destroy the Temple, but there is something that is
beyond their reach, a divine presence that never leaves Jerusalem.
The
Kabbalists teach that man is a microcosm. Whatever exists in the world,
can be found within ourselves. If there is a Wall that is so holy that
it can never be destroyed, then within us must also be a spark of
holiness that can never be lost. This is our spark of Jewishness, the
essence of the Jewish soul. Our soul may be surrounded by foreign
invaders - skepticism, ignorance, scars from negative Jewish experiences
- but it nevertheless remains intact. Nothing can extinguish the Jewish
spark, it is always there waiting to be ignited.
Even
an agnostic Jew who has been dislocated from his spiritual heritage for
generations, is Jewish at the deepest level of his being. Nothing can
take that away. Eventually, if he allows it, that innate Jewishness will
surface.
Everyone
has a different catalyst that ignites this spark. In your case, the
microcosm met the macrocosm. Your Jewish spark, the indestructible
presence of G-d within you, was awakened at the Wall, the indestructible
presence of G-d in the world. I guess it's not surprising that many
have had that experience.
Now
it's up to you. You have been given a gift. You have come face to face
with your soul. These experiences don't happen often. But once you have
discovered the Holy Wall within yourself, you can start to rebuild your
inner Temple around it, so that sense of holiness will never be lost
again. That's the secret of faith. You don't get it from the outside,
you discover it within yourself. It was always there.
Good Shabbos,
Rabbi Moss
