was nothing moving about any of the particulars of the scene; if anything, Wendy felt sad that the women praying at the Kotel seemed so singular, so without the protection of a mass, but each sobbing, alone against the wall. Yet, the entirety of the spectacle moved her. People came to connect with something beyond themselves. This was the place Jews had been pulled and drawn to for so many thousands of years.
As she watched women praying by themselves, leaderless, each woman separate, the voice of the mysterious harmonizer at Shir Tzion came into her mind. How did he sing with the melody of the group, yet improvise his own sound beyond it, totally individuated? Could she find a way to do that, to feel herself part of the group, not an outsider alone and detached, yet still able to sing independently?
She listened to the group of men singing joyfully on their side of the Kotel, and thought back to an undergraduate party she had been to for members of a Columbia singing group and a visiting group from another college. It was at the alumni club, a space unlike any she’d been in at Columbia, with old wooden beams in the ceiling and leaded glass windows. It exuded the solidity of a Tudor style house. She hadn’t known a building like this existed on the mostly urban campus, sandwiched among much higher structures to either side on Riverside Drive. Either the singing group’s CDs were selling really well, or there was an incredibly generous alumnus out there. The guests were drinking from an open bar and nibbling copious hors d’oeuvres. Suddenly, someone in the middle of the room started singing. People spontaneously gravitated—a powerful current of force propelling them—to the spot where the singing had started. Without choreography or staging, a natural grouping occurred, as though they were a flock of birds, a collusion of singers banding together, jamming. Wendy stood at their periphery. She wasn’t sure what exactly was so moving about the experience, whether the talent and youth of the singers, or the way she heard individual parts but also the totality, different from what each individual brought alone. Not a singer herself, Wendy was glad to be in their presence, absorbing the joy and spontaneity she felt in the room. She remembered walking home on a silent Riverside Drive with her date, and asking what he liked most about singing. His response? “Eliciting emotions from the audience.” He added, “It’s what I like most about sex, making a woman feel good and watching her in pleasure.” Then, he had kissed her.
Now, Wendy longed to know where Donny was at this moment. Would he go back to working at a restaurant one day? He seemed so different when he was chopping. She remembered walking with him, laughing about Shani’s ridiculous turban, listening to his story of his parents disapproving of him, the sight of his adorable posterior chopping, and the kiss. Would they kiss again? Wendy fantasized that he would sneak out of his yeshiva late at night and come to her apartment, knocking on her door, telling her he had to see her again. Her rational self knew that he was embarrassed that they had kissed; the fantasy scenario was unlikely. Still, watching the others praying, seeing their sense of knowing what they were here for, what they were doing, only increased Wendy’s sense of aloneness. She thought, I guess I need to pray that I make some friends this year, to have a group of people, or even just one person, to talk to and joke with, who will understand me and listen to what I am doing and care. Donny isn’t that person, but he’s the closest I’ve come in the last three weeks . . .
She descended to the Kotel and stood at the edge of the women’s section, the very back but not inside, so that men were passing her too as crowds began to gather for prayers. She wasn’t praying or even holding a book; her aura of being out of place caused a recruiter to spot her quickly. The recruiter was dressed in a black hat, suit, and Bruce Springsteen T-shirt on top of a white button-down shirt. He asked if she needed a place for Shabbos. On hearing her assent, he pointed to a place to wait, along with other guests of a family that hosted twenty strangers for a Shabbat dinner each week.
She waited for the father to lead the group to a huge apartment featuring a panoramic view of the Western Wall. The man of the house—she never did get the name straight—in his early sixties, was tall and fit, with the relaxed look of the prosperous man he was, a dealer in rare Judaica. His wife was at least twenty years younger. Under her wig, her face looked drawn and exhausted, her eyes had heavy circles, and she was either pregnant or lugging around extra weight from a previous pregnancy, though the youngest child appeared about four. There was clearly a kitchen staff, but the woman seemed to absorb the stress of these multiple guests while the man enjoyed playing host. Wendy felt sorry for her. It was generous of him to invite strangers to his lavishly appointed home each week, Wendy thought, but didn’t he have friends of his own to ask? There was something manufactured about the set up—did a yeshiva pay this family to do this? Wendy wanted to ask whether he had a security system, kept his most valuable pieces at the gallery he ran at the Cardo, or just had faith that no one invited to his home would steal?
The host began the meal by having each guest say what they were doing in Israel and what made them happy about Shabbat. At Wendy’s turn, she said she was taking ulpan at Hebrew University and writing a dissertation, and that seeing people buying flowers in the street on Friday was her favorite part of Shabbat. She was seated next to a girl named Dawn who had come to Israel to do an archeological dig and was spending Shabbat at a hostel in the Old City run by RISEN, a women’s division of the RISE yeshiva. On Sunday, Dawn was hoping to try out some classes at RISEN’s school, Bayit Ne’eman, in a different part of Jerusalem. Dawn’s favorite part of Shabbat was being at the Kotel.
The Sabbath blessings were intoned, everyone washed their hands at a sink built into the dining room for this purpose, and the Hamotzi was said over the bread. The wife went into the kitchen to get the first course, assisted by other female guests and a maid who appeared to be some sort of foreign worker. Wendy looked down at her plate of gefilte fish and lost any appetite. She picked at it to be polite and felt similarly when a plate of food consisting of a dollop of chopped liver, a piece of chicken with paprika and oil, a mound of white rice, and green beans cooked with tomatoes was brought to the table and put in front of her and the other guests, each plate indistinguishable, without variation. She wanted to feel grateful to her hosts for welcoming her to their home, but she just felt resentment at having such unappetizing fare in front of her. She felt like she should offer to help in the kitchen, but since a number of female guests had already volunteered, she thought any aid she could provide would be superfluous. She was there to observe, she knew, but she also wanted to know, were the observations in the kitchen as important as those at the dinner table? She didn’t want to be around the wife who looked as though all she wanted to do was go to sleep, not deal with all these guests. The father gave a talk on the Torah portion of the week as the dessert was arriving: clear plastic cups filled with red jello topped by whipped cream made from some kind of non-dairy chemical that left a film on the roof of Wendy’s mouth, like the patently artificial oil it must be derived from. Wendy couldn’t follow all of the talk, but it had to do with judgment, as the name of the portion was Shoftim, Judges. Somehow, the fact that the land of Israel was holier than the Diaspora demanded a different kind of system of judgment; it was held to a higher standard. He added that they were now in the month Elul in the Jewish calendar, and the initials of the month, alef-lamed-vov-lamed, stood for the phrase “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine,” which meant it was a time to draw closer to God. To truly do this, one must live a Torah-true life in Israel, he said. The message, to Wendy, held the same appeal as the chemically enhanced food did, both assuming one size fits all, that guests would wish to eat identical items and portions, and that, once given both food and message, the assembled would be delighted and willing to swallow them equally and gratefully.
At the dinner’s conclusion, Wendy left with Dawn and asked if she could visit her at Bayit Ne’eman because Wendy was, in her spare time after ulpan, hoping to take some other classes. Wendy accompanied Dawn back to the hostel she was staying at before trying to find a cab home herself.
At the hostel, she picked up one of the variety of brochures listing study programs for women. The brochure read:
Do you feel flattened by life?
Want to rise and find your full potential?
RISEN is here!
Not sure how to access the
jewels of