I’ll say it: I’ve never been a huge fan of the Western Wall.
The wall itself is cool, surviving 2000 years through conquerors and the elements and its historical symbolism for the Jewish people, both as a bulwark and as a sign of mourning, cannot be overstated.
But then we decided to come and start doing things at the wall, and that’s when the trouble began. Soon the wall became the world’s largest minyan factory, a good thing until it started to spawn interdenominational and interethnic conflict: Sephardim and Ashkenazim, different Hasidic sects, not to mention what may be the biggest contemporary problem: the growing number of gender-equal Jews who feel out of place in a gender-separated area.
Worse than all of those problems, however–which occur wherever large numbers of Jews gather–is not that people are disrespecting or desecrating the wall but just the opposite: some are starting ot pay too much importance to it.
I refer here to an organization called Western Wall Prayers, where, according to their site, you can pay “to have an observant Jew pray 40 days at the Kotel on your behalf… Whether you are in need of a marriage partner, health, children, business success or other, you too could join the countless of other people who have had their prayers answered.”
The organization’s rationale is that “There is a famous Segula (Torah mystical recipe) that a person who goes to the Western Wall for 40 consecutive days to pray for 1 request, will have that request answered.”
So let’s rehash: you pay for some guy you don’t know to pray at a wall for you for forty days.
I’m a fan of prayer. I do it thrice daily and am all about the spiritual effects, etc. of communing with oneself, one’s community, one’s god, etc. But I’m not a fan of money replacing prayer. If anything, given recent events, Jews should stop focusing on money and shift their attention to less material things, like spiritual exploration or good, non-monetary deeds. To encourage someone to pay, not pray, sends the wrong message. Catholics learned that almost 500 years ago with the Reformation, which began when Luther called out a German cleric for selling indulgences, something akin to what this organization claims to do.
But perhaps most disconcerting is the idea that a prayer at the Western Wall means more than a prayer anywhere else where one may find spirituality, community or feel divine presence. Judaism, to quote AJ Heschel, is about “a sanctuary in time,” not space. We can build synagogues everywhere. We can make communities around the world. There is definite significance to Jerusalem as a holy city, but several sources, including Rav Nachman of Breslau, suggest that we can create holiness wherever we are. To deny that claim is a slight ot generations of Diaspora Judaism.
Prayer is personal and prayer is communal. It should be something we’re attached to in a direct and close way, not something we pay for online so that someone we don’t know can have our prayers answered for us. If it’s your request, make it. Sincerity comes from the heart, not from the pocket.
