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During the almost 2,000 years of the Jewish exile and dispersion from Israel, many wars have been fought over Jerusalem. All told, the city has been destroyed and rebuilt no less than 9 times - with each conqueror further attempting to obscure the glorious Jewish past.
But through the centuries, one symbol has miraculously remained intact: the Western Wall. It represents the indestructibility of the Jewish People.
Song of Songs 2:8-9
The voice of my Beloved! Behold it came suddenly to redeem me, as if leaping over mountains, skipping over hills. In His swiftness to redeem me, my Beloved is like a gazelle or a young hart. I thought I would be forever alone. But behold! He stands behind our wall, observing through the windows, peering through the lattices.
Midrash Rabba, Song of Songs 2:4
"Behold - He stands behind our wall" - this refers to the Western Wall of the Temple. Why so? Because God has sworn that it will never be destroyed.
Midrash Rabba, Exodus 2:2
Rabbi Eleazer said: The Divine Presence never departed from the Temple, as it is written, 'For now I have chosen and sanctified this house so that My name shall be there forever and My eyes and My heart will be there all the days' (II Chronicles 7:16)... Even when [the Temple] is destroyed, it remains in its sanctity... Even when it is destroyed, God does not leave it.
Rebbe Acha said: The Shechina (Divine Presence) will never depart from the Western Wall, as it is written, "Behold - He stands behind our wall" (Song of Songs 2:9).
Midrash Rabba, Lamentations 1:31
When Vespasian had subdued the city, he assigned the destruction of the four ramparts to the four generals. The Western Wall was allotted to Pangar. Now it had been decreed by Heaven that this should never be destroyed because the Shechinah dwells in the west. The others demolished their sections but Pangar did not demolish his.
Vespasian sent for him and asked, "Why did you not destroy your section?" He replied, "By your life, I acted so for the honor of your empire; for if I had demolished it, nobody would know (in the time to come) what it was you destroyed; but when people look at the Western Wall, they will exclaim, 'Behold the might of Vespasian from what he didn't destroy!'"
(1) ruth housman , August 7, 2008
the indwelling spirit of God
Jerusalem has mythic, powerful metaphoric connects for most people, regardless of religion. There is a story that has drawn us all to Jerusalem, and, in fact, the history of this city is one of great sorrow, and one of great spiritual import. We all go to the Wailing Wall, and I mean this in the deepest metaphorical sense and I mean "all peoples". Why? Because life is so much about suffering. Who has not suffered personally or witnessed the deep suffering and pain of others? We are all of us part of this and we all go to the Wall in questioning, that eternal wailing question, Why? Now I have read so much about the philosophical understanding of why bad things happen to good people and yet... and yet. We all do question when we experience such deep burdens of sadness. We all ask, Why? This brings us to the Wall and this brings us to God or to the void and we ask and we ask. Man is always seeking meaning and we do what we can to hold each other up and to seek and bring in the light.
So I am saying we take the Wall with us and within us, we all have the shekinah, that indwelling presence that is the light. When we see this, that the "i" itself is a candle, that we all contain that fire, then we come to worship at the "temple of our familiar". Perhaps the deepest kind of journey is to see that divinity resides in all creation and that every blade of grass is accounted for.
There could have been so many many stories and yet THIS story is so powerful. I have asked Why THIS story and I think we all have answers. This is a profound journey of soul