Tuesday, January 10, 2006

How do you not feel it???

Directed to Bec's blog by Aliyah Blog, I was moved.... It got me thinking about a powerful visit to the Kotel that I experienced this past summer.....Not sure which "time" it was this past summer that I had visited the Kotel, but it was our first time as a family. My husband took our big guy (then just 4 1/4) and I took the little guy who was almost 2.

I felt it like I had felt it the first time, when I was 17, there for Hadassah's year course program. That first time, I had been reminded of my father's story of his first visit to the Kotel. He was in his 20's, stationed in England in the Air force...he was a rabbi's assistant! Anyway, he told me the story the night before I left for Year Course how when he looked up at that wall he felt the weight of all of the years of all of our ancestors who had stood in that very same spot. It connected him, and he wanted to share that story with me so that I in turn would feel connected in a similar way. Needless to say, I get those tears in my eyes just thinking about it now.

So there I was, more than 15 years later, with my son, thinking of my father (gone now 10 years), and thinking of his brother, my uncle, with whom I had a similar conversation to Bec's with her poppa. (My uncle was dying of cancer and told me he had wanted to go to Israel and wished he could go with us in our suitcase. )

And there I was, WITH MY SON. wow.....and as that little guy said in his super cute voice, "Emah, I touch the special wall." I lost it........and once again, the power of the history, the power of the AIR, of the feeling, of knowing that when it's right, it's right...........all of that came flooding down upon me.

Wow, and Bec said that some people say they feel NOTHING???