Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

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Category: Kotel

Jerusalem past and present

April 20, 2015 /

For our second report from Jerusalem we begin outside the walls of today’s Old City at the archeological site believed to be the original city of David. While the possibilities of what is being discovered in the layers beneath the surface are exciting, arriving at this site we see that the archeological park abuts and cuts into the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan where people living today are in communities upon that surface. Here again we are exposed to the multi-faceted and complex nature of every site in Jerusalem.

Up here is also the entrance to the ancient water tunnels that were dug to bring water into the walled city. For this part of todays report we turn to Andrew, Ben and Lily Rosenfeld who wrote up this report on our morning adventure:
Our first adventure of the day was exploring Hezekiah’s tunnels. These tunnels were constructed almost 3000 years ago to transport spring water to the City of David. This was used as a military tactic to provide water even when the city was under siege. We walked down several flights of stairs as we headed towards the beginning of the tunnel, and as soon as we entered the tunnel the cold (but refreshing) water quickly got to almost 2 1/2 feet deep. This may not seem like much for most, but it was quite adventurous for our youngest, 7 year old explorer! We proceeded though the dark 1750 foot tunnel only able to see with the help of our headlamps and flashlights, wading through the narrow and twisting tunnel which at times was less than 5 feet high. We really enjoyed this adventure and found it amazing to think that this underground tunnel was built so long ago without the conveniences of modern day technology.

Some of our group opted for a drier route, but below are the brave souls who waded through, celebrating their victorious exit at the other end!

From here we made our way via the Dung Gate (so called because this was the means by which the Romans removed their sewage from the city) back to the Kotel plaza and into the tunnels that take us the length of the Western Wall underground, revealing the amazing scale of the supporting wall that Herod built to create the temple mount, along with remnants of that time such as a pavement, columns and additional water systems. 

We had two incredible guides today. Both were Orthodox women. The first shared that she had close to 40 grandchildren! She brought Jerusalem of 2000 years ago to life as we walked through the Kotel tunnels. Her passion was evident and this was yet another important voice for us to hear, even if we might dispute some of what we heard presented as history. This trip is all about taking in ALL of the narratives and encountering all of the people of Israel and this was an importnat voice for us to hear too. And there was no question that she left us with a feeing of pride and wonderment and deep sense of connection to our ancient past.



A short lunch break was enjoyed at Machaneh Yehudah – the Jerusalem outdoor food market. Blocks of Halva were aquired, borekas and rogelach enjoyed, spices smelt, and more. 

We ended the afternoon with a very powerful and emotional visit to Yad Vashem. One of our group, Jeff Govendo, saw the same of someone who shared the same last name in the very first exhibit we saw — someone who occupied a place somewhere on his extended family tree. Our excellent guide emphasizd personal connectioons and individual stories throughout our tour. The museum was packed full – we saw members of St. Stephen’s there too, as well as a large group of female IDF soldiers. We learned that it is a requirement for all IDF soldiers to visit Yad Vashem sometime during their service. What makes this Holocaust museum experience unique is the deep sense that is strongly communicated that Israel is the response to the Holocaust. It is the way that, as a Jewish people, we have the ability to make 
Never again mean that we will never again rely on others to provide safae haven to the Jews of the world when trouble strikes.  We ended our visit with a brief reflection circle, El Malei, Kaddish, and our gude, Noam, gave each of us a card with the name of someone who perished in the Holocaust whose name bore some resemblance to our own.

After a break back at the hotel, we had the enormous pleasure of spending a delicious meal wth Joe Federman. Joe grew up at CBS, the son of Toby and Mike who are founding members of the congregation. He is now Bureau Chief for the Associated Press covering Gaza, Israel and the Palestinian authority. We had a wonderful conversation, learning about the nature of the news business in this complex part of the world, post election analysis, the US-Israel relationshiip, the Red Sox, NE Patriots, and more!

Today’s blog post has been written on the bus at 4 am as we make our way to Masada in time for sunrise. Forgive any blurry eyed typos!

A Post Shabbat Update from Jerusalem

April 18, 2015 /

Shalom!
Our Congregation B’nai Shalom Israel trip is off to a great start. It is hard to believe that we have only been here since Friday evening – we have already seen and experienced so much!
We had very smooth and straightforward flights. Once we’d met our tour guides we were taken straight to Jerusalem. The first thing that we notice is that one truly ascends to Jerusalem – the bus began to climb the winding road about 2/3rds into our 1 hour ride to the capital city. Entering from the west of the city, we were taken to the Tayelet for our first amazing view. There we had our own brief Kabbalat Shabbat service as the afternoon began to transition to dusk.

After checking in to our hotel in the heart of downtown Jerusalem we had a short walk to a delicious, muti-course meal – an opportunity to taste some of the best that Jerusalem has to offer and a wonderful time for our group to really start to connect with each other.

Today – Shabbat – we started off the day after an incredible breakfast spread with another amazing view – this time from the Mount of Olives. This gave us an opportunity to drive through some of the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. From our viewing point we could see the gravestones of all those buried on the sides of the Mount, and we learned about the location of the original City of David and how the current walled Old City came into being and slowly took shape.  Our wonderful lead guide, Noam, engages us all every step of the way with the help of Ben and Lily – the two youngest members of our tour – renacting a biblical scene between the Jebusite King and King David when David acquired the land to begin to build his city.

From there we entered the Old City via the Damascus Gate into the Muslim quarter and we immediately had all our senses bombarded with the sounds, smells and colors of the market. The city was bustling with energy – while the Jewish quarter remains quiet on Shabbat the rest of the city is open for business.  Traveling by foot from the Muslim quarter to the Jewish quarter our group began to get a true sense of the geography and what it truly means when people speak of dividing the city – a task that seems quite impossible as one narrow, winding street in one quarter leads directly in the narrow streets of the next.

We arrived at the Kotel – the Western Wall. We took a little time in the area of the wall divided for men and women and prayer notes were placed in the cracks. Then we walked over to the continuation of the wall in the excavated Robinson’s arch area – an area now designated for egalitarian prayer services. We were there alone and took the opportunity to have a short morning service together. Both on Friday night and Shabbat morning, our melodies, poems and readings highlighted the Jerusalem we were experiencing right before us through our liturgy.

Lunch brought us back to the Muslim quarter for some of the best falafel and hummous that Jerusalem has to offer.  Then a tour of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre – by far the most crowded site we visited all day, reminding us Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land is an enormous source of tourism to Israel, far outscaling Jewish travel by dint of being such a large world population.

In the afternoon, some of us stayed with Noam to explore more of the old city and some of us headed over for some time at the Israel museum. Both groups had an amazing experience – some wonderful exhibits at the museum, including the Dead Sea Scrolls and findings from the Cairo Geniza.  In the old city we took in more views, and had a chance meeting and conversation with a Jewish Israeli of Yemenite descent and a Palestinian Arab from Haifa who were making a documentary about their friendship and the challenges of identity and who were gracious in sharing some of this with us. With this exchange, as with so much of what we saw today, the complexity and many faces of Israel were brought to us in very real and concrete ways. We also stopped in at a 200 year old functioning tehina factory – the smell of sesame for several hundred feet around was incredible!

Perhaps no clearer example of this was our closing program, which we shared with member of St Stephen’s Church who are also traveling from Westborough. Two members of Seeds for Peace – a Jewish Israeli and an Arab Muslim from East Jerusalem – took us through a very intense experience of the challenges of truly listening to each others’ narratives. They left us with a sense of great sadness at how few Israelis and Palestinians have these opportunities and how remarkable their friendship is. There is still much to debrief from this experience, not only for our group but also, I hope, with the church group back in Westborough. Pictured below is Father Jesse Abell of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church and Micali Morin, who is in Israel for a High School Semester program with NFTY -it was wonderful to have her join us for the evening (and I had an opportunity for a catch-up over an early dinner before the program).

All this… just one day!  And as I finish typing this update, the downtown streets below my window are still buzzing with people who come out to eat, drink and socialize once Shabbat ends – and it is now 1 am!  Time to get some shut-eye before we launch into the next full day that lies ahead.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

My first experience at the Kotel: In solidarity with Women of the Wall

December 21, 2009 /

Part of a solidarity blog series for Women of the Wall.  Each piece is written by a member of the Rosh Hodesh group of Congregation B’nai Israel.


My first experience seeing the Kotel was after sundown on a Yom Kippur.  We were on our way to a Break Fast with a very close friend from home – a kid I grew up with who was like a brother.  I was to have been visiting and traveling with him but, after making Aliyah, he went into the army.  So when I arrived I went to his apartment and was staying with his roommates.
He came home for the holiday and we went to his friends for Yom Kippur.  Of course, I didn’t even get to sit with him in Shul either.  So after sundown we went to Yerushalayim and the Old City before joining other friends to eat.  I actually was on the rooftops looking down, and then we went into the plaza of the Kotel.  I’m glad I was with ‘family’, even though he didn’t come in the women’s side, but was waiting when I was finished.
Yom Kippur services, Yizkor (memorial), my prayers, and the notes at the wall, and being with a person who is family, was the perfect first time to have this incredible, moving experience.  It was still early, and the Kotel was quiet and still, and fairly empty.

To Pray in a Tallit. In Solidarity with Women of the Wall

December 20, 2009 /

Part of a solidarity blog series for Women of the Wall.  Each piece is written by a member of the Rosh Hodesh group of Congregation B’nai Israel.


Wrapped in the ‘arms’ of God
Embraced in love and intimacy …
Easing into the secure comfort
I am free to pray with all my heart …

God’s voice pours out of me
as I feel the Breath fill my body …
Sometimes there are tears of joy or sadness
But always there is a feeling of ‘coming home.’

One of the most powerful times of prayer was in the beautiful space of a chapel at a Christian Retreat Center.  This was clearly a sacred place.  God was in this place and, yes, I did know it.  Freedom to be who I am, a Jewish woman of faith … welcoming sisters.

How ironic that Jewish women do not have that freedom to pray so safely in ‘our homeland’, at one of the most sacred sites of the Jewish people.  How sad to realize that ‘my people’ would not honor my right to pray, abuse me and treat me as less than human.  Maybe they are not ‘my people’.  Does God listen to and answer their prayers?

A week of blogging in solidarity with Women of the Wall

December 19, 2009 /

In the coming week there will be a new blog each evening from a member of the Rosh Hodesh group of B’nai Israel.  Last night, at our Rosh Hodesh program, some women wrote a response to the recent arrest of Nofrat Frankel last month at the Rosh Chodesh Shacharit service of Women of the Wall.  Each woman was asked to reflect on a range of experiences: the experience of being at the Kotel, the experience of praying in a tallit, or a time in their lives when they were aware of their inclusion or exclusion from Jewish community as a woman.  Each woman shared something personal, spiritual and deeply moving.  Below is the sermon, delivered on Shabbat, December 18, dedicated to standing in solidarity with Women of the Wall this Rosh Hodesh Tevet.  Please visit us each night to read another solidarity blog.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz


Standing in Solidarity with Women of the Wall
Last week, a call went out Israel, the USA, and Europe, to make yesterday, Rosh Chodesh, Tevet, a day of solidarity at venues around the world in support of the right of women to pray at the Western Wall in “dignity, in safety and in shared community.”  Why did such a call go out, and what was the response?
First, a little history, courtesy of Phyllis Chesler, an American, Jewish feminist:  21 years ago for the first time in history, 70 Jewish women prayed together out loud as a group at the Western Wall (or “Kotel”) in Jerusalem. Women have always prayed at the Kotel, often silently, and alone. What made this service radically different, certainly transcendent, was that we not only prayed aloud but we also chanted from the Torah.  The group consisted of women of every Jewish denomination, but many of the founding leaders were Orthodox women – educated Orthodox women, and the group’s way of praying, including their Torah reading among a group of women only, was then, and has remained, entirely within the remit of halachah – Jewish law.
Phyllis Chesler, describing that first time, tells us: Some of us donned tallesim (prayer shawls) and head coverings, many of us did not. We were radiant, overwhelmed, humbled, united.  However, once the ultra-orthodox men and women understood that Jewish women were chanting from a Torah, they began hurling unholy and terrifying curses at us which fouled the very air. Threats of physical violence quickly followed. We made it out safely: this time, the first time.
As the group continued to meet, early morning, once a month, every month, at Rosh Chodesh, the response of the ultra-orthodox who have claimed the Wall as their own, personal synagogue, became increasingly violent.  Metal chairs were thrown over the mechitza at the women, curses were shouted out.  Women of the Wall, as they called themselves, decided to go to the Israeli Supreme Court, asking for permission to conduct their women-only service, on the women’s side of the mechitza, and read from the Torah, for 11 hours a year – one hour, once a month, on Rosh Chodesh.  Women around the world rallied in support.  Artists created tallitot to help raise money for the cause (and tonight I wear the Women of the Wall Tallit), tambourines for Women’s Seders, and much more.
Phyllis Chesler tells us: The Israeli Supreme Court would ultimately render three decisions. The first decision, in 1994, sent us to the Knesset where, I kid you not, the guys tried to banish our prayer group to rubble-strewn Arab areas of Jerusalem. We returned to court and, in 2000, rejoiced over a unanimous three judge decision in our favor. The state immediately appealed this decision. We then faced nine judges. In 2002, four judges were in our favor, four opposed us–and the fifth and decisive vote against us was cast by none other than the great liberal and humanitarian, Chief Justice Aharon Barak, a man who has been able to find justice for Palestinian Arabs, both Christians and Jews but not for Jewish women.  This 2002 decision ordered the government to build a prayer site for us at Robinson’s Arch, which is mainly an archeological and tourist site.
I have attended a Rosh Chodesh service at the wall – about 5 years ago, when I was in Israelfor a summer program.  Even before we left for Robinson’s Arch for a beautiful Torah service where a young woman had her batmitzvah (and her grandmother came up for an aliyah for the very first time in her life), as 70 women began to quietly sing the Hallel prayers at the Kotel, I witnessed a bearded man stand on a chair and start hurling abuse at us – ‘You are worse than the Christians!’  ‘You are prostitutes!’ he hollered in Hebrew.  Two soldiers came over to our group and told us we had to lower our voices.
Things have been pretty quiet for the Women of the Wall in recent months.  So quiet that, last month, they wondered if perhaps the ultra-Orthodox at the Wall had stopped paying attention.  And so, when they’d reached the end of the morning prayers without hearing any abuse, they thought they’d take out the Torah and see if they could continue without moving to Robinson’s Arch.  It became evident in moments that they could not.  As they packed up and started to walk away from the Kotel to continue, as usual, at Robinson’s Arch, Nofrat Frankel, an Israeli medical student and Masorti/Conservative Jew, holding the Torah, was surrounded and taken to the on-site police station, apparently for wearing a tallit which, they claimed, was forbidden (incidentally, halachah states that women are not obliged to wear a tallit but absolutely does not state that it is forbidden).  She was told that a criminal file was being opened on her, and that she was banned from the Kotel for two weeks.
And so, once again, women of every Jewish denomination, as well as men, are rallying to stand in support of Women of the Wall.  Last night, we dedicated B’nai Israel’s Rosh Hodesh group program to Women of the Wall.  After studying the history, and the recent events, each of us wrote a personal reflection that related to the issues at hand.  Tonight I want to share just the topics.  But each piece was powerful and moving, and needs and deserves to be seen and read in its entirety.  And so, beginning Saturday night, for 8 days, in echo of the 8 days of Chanukah that we complete tonight – our festival that celebrates and remembers our reclaiming of our Religious Freedoms – one of these pieces will be posted on our congregational blog, shma koleinu (which, if you still haven’t found yet, can be easily accessed via the link on the front page of our temple website).
There is a beautiful piece on the experience of praying with a tallit.  It begins:
Wrapped in the ‘arms’ of God, Embraced in love and intimacy… Easing into the secure comfort, I am free to pray with all my heart…

Another woman writes of a moving experience at the Kotel on a quiet evening, on the way to break fast at the end of Yom Kippur.
Marjorie Freeman writes of her experience, growing up in a Reform temple, with new-found appreciation for a sense of inclusivity she felt from childhood.
Barbara Levine reflected on her experience of an adult batmitzvah, and the powerful ritual of mikvah that she chose to have before that special day.  Highlighting the beauty of existing in a pluralist Jewish community, she tells of the day that she met an Orthodox woman who had been so deeply moved by the article she wrote about her mikvah experience.  So much spirituality from a willingness for all of us to open up to the God-moments that we can find in each others’ expressions of Judaism.
Beth Lazar writes about visiting synagogues of different denominations in the USA, and the bond of connecting to the Torah rituals in each one, praying that all women everywhere will one day be able to feel that connection.
Heidi Gassel shared some deeply moving parts of her biography, and some of the life-changing moments of inclusion of exclusion experienced by her and members of her family in the context of Jewish community.
Becca writes a powerful prayer, celebrating the fullness of being Jewish and a woman, calling on God’s presence, and singing praises to a God that embraces and loves all of us.
And I wrote about my first Tallit, how I came to wear one, and how it transformed my prayer and, subsequently, transformed my life.
Nofrat Frankel, and all the Women of the Wall, we stand with you, we rededicate ourselves to support the cause of Women of the Wall, and we rededicate ourselves as Jewish men and women to embrace and celebrate a pluralist Jewish community, committed to being mindful of when we are guilty of erecting unnecessary barriers of exclusion, wanting to see the day when all of us, every part of Klal Yisrael, is able to explore and express our Jewish spirituality without fear.

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