Cohen blessing

Look from the female half

On October 12, the largest mass service took place in Jerusalem at the Western Wall - the blessing of the Kohanim.

In order to have time to get through the police barriers to the Old City, Tel Aviv had to leave in the morning at 7. Intuition did not let me down - I not only parked in the parking lot of the Mamila district, which had been packed to capacity, but also reached the male half of a huge area near the Western Wall of the Temple in time.

A couple of years ago, I was filming right here, in the forbidden part: a policeman from the “David” station allowed me to perform a symbolic prayer on “foreign territory” (though not in the crowd, but on the sidelines on an elevated platform).

Today, however, there was no luck: a dark-skinned policewoman, not listening to my admonitions, imperiously ordered: “To the women! That's where you belong."

With difficulty pushing closer to the Wall, I try to climb the stairs leading to the tiny female synagogue.

At first it seems that the task is unbearable: in the female half, the apple has nowhere to fall. And everyone is trying to get closer to the Wall, stretch their hands to the heat radiating stones, sneaking tears away ...

After talking with a pretty lady (elegant hat, heavy French accent), I miss a group of repatriates from Ethiopia and follow them up the stairs.

None of the wobbly metal steps - not a single square centimeter, you can not even put a foot. And suddenly!..

“I can’t - I can’t breathe...” with these words an elderly woman bursts out from the miniature room above. Having let her through, I squeeze into the prayer room, change the lens mid-air, and then, with a television camera, I occupy a third of the doorway. Anyone who wants (and can) will come in and out.

From the height of the area at the Western Wall looks completely different from the bottom, from the crowd. The farthest rows of participants in the ritual strive beyond the horizon.

How many thousand people gathered here? Twenty? Forty? Fifty?! The people of Israel? !!

At first, the golden-haired beauty standing next to her frowns with displeasure with each press of the shutter - the clicks of the shutter clearly make it difficult to concentrate not only on her, but also on other believers.

“I’ll just shoot a little bit, okay?”

“You’re welcome,” the golden-haired girl smiles. “I wanted to ask what lens you have.”

Shocked to the core by the unexpected turn of events, I sneak a look around. So there it is!.. The ceremony of blessing of the kohanim is intensively filmed by almost all the women around me - who knows what. A girl (“I live in Bnei Brak, our family are religious Zionists,” she says) takes a soap box out of her backpack, and older ladies perform a real photo-video symphony on their cell phones.

“Glory to you, Almighty, I am not alone and not a black sheep.”

The prayer begins. Through the viewfinder peering into the faces of women. Most of them went into reading the psalms.

I wonder what kind of life did this elderly Israeli woman live? How many children she gave birth to and raised, how many grandchildren brings up now?

And what does this girl dream of? Marriage or true love? Or is it both? Or maybe studying at a university? ..

What kind of loss does this pretty, secular woman mourn, over whose face tears keep flowing? Who died? And which war? Father in the Doomsday War or brother - in the days of the Second Lebanese?

The impression is that today the female half of Israel has gathered here, at the Western Wall of the Temple. What tired hands many of them have. What tired faces... High school girls and great-grandmothers, secular and religious, Ashkenazi and Sephardic women, “Russians” and “Ethiopians”, single and married, pregnant women, young mothers...

Even blond foreign women have crammed into the crowd at the Temple Wall. They, however, can hardly understand that this country torn by wars and terror is largely on the fragile shoulders of the assembled and absent women here. In no other state of the prosperous enlightened West, the share of women has not been so much trials, monstrous tragedies and irrecoverable losses, like Israelite - believers and secular, young and old people talking with an American, Russian, French, Spanish accent.

These weak (we will pay tribute to the stereotype) women are in fact endowed with incredible, unimaginable spiritual strength. A nation of iron ladies!

In unison with my thoughts, Israel’s Chief Rabbi David Lau asks the Most High to guard the soldiers and officers of the Israel Defense Forces and the security forces.

Having dissolved in the atmosphere of mass prayer (divine energy!), I also sinfully make a wish. No, I don’t ask Him for peace - it’s stupid and unrealistic. Just today, at a conference in Cairo, the Arab states and the West wrote a collective “check” for two and a quarter billion (!) dollars for the restoration of Gaza. How many long-range missiles will Hamas purchase and produce for this astronomical sum, how many tunnels will it dig...

No, asking for peace for Israel is the same as believing in the imminent end of the possessed Islamic State.

I ask small: respite. Let at least the new year 5775 pass quietly. Well, if not the whole year, then at least the first quarter ...

Author: Jane kravchik