We greeted the Shabbat bride beautifully. In Jerusalemite tradition, we meandered through the crowded noisy alleyways of Machane Yehuda, witnessing the cacophony of Jewish communal life: sellers hawking their brightly colored fruits and varieties of nuts and spices, fish salesmen showing their still-flopping catches, bakeries offering the most delicious still-hot challot and burekas.

After changing, we gathered in a top-floor room in a nearby hotel for Kabbalat Shabbat, our Friday evening prayers. Looking through huge windows at the expanse of Jerusalem at night, we lit our last night of Chanukah candles and then Shabbat candles. With Rachel Isaacson serving as Shaliach Tzibur (literally “representative of the community,” but more colloquial the “musical prayer leader” – another of her many talents that we keep enjoying to discover), we sang songs of praise and thanksgiving.

Reflecting on the connections we made that morning with our ancestors (at the Wall, in the alleyways of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, at Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum), we davened the Avot v’Imahot prayer, reminding the Holy One of Blessing that we are the descendants of those ancestors with which God had such close relations. Watching a youngster peacefully sleeping on the lap of one of our teens, and recognizing that all anyone really wants is to know that his/her children can sleep soundly each night like this little one, we prayed for Shalom Rav, a great peace for Jerusalem, Israel, the Middle East and the whole world. We reflected on the lessons learned from the juxtaposition of two tiulim (trips) in one day: the somberness of Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and the cacophony of the Machane Yehuda open air market. Participants offer so many meaningful drashot (interpretations) on this juxtaposition: that it teaches we moved from an attempt to destroy us to witnessing our survival. That the rich variety of Jewish life in pre-Holocaust Europe and North Africa lives on in the wide varieties of Jews shopping shoulder to shoulder. That since you cannot escape the reality that being even only ¼ Jewish would have put you in Hitler’s crematoria, you should embrace this wonderfully creative people called the Jews. That like good wines, the reason for survival must be based on an appreciation for a mixture of the rich varietals of Judaism.

[Incidentally, I found Yad Vashem overwhelming and Machane Yehuda reinvigorating. The one left a bad taste in my mouth (how could people do this to each other? Why does it continue in Darfur, through the words of Iran’s president, elsewhere in the world?). The other left my stomach aching joyously from the many tastes (including baker Marzipan’s world-famous chocolate rugulach).]

Standing in the middle of marketplace, I felt at peace; I could have stood in the middle of the crowds for hours. Celebrating Shabbat, I felt at peace; Congregation Or Ami’s light shined from one end of the world to the other that Shabbat eve. Looking down at the clock on my computer, I realize that Or Ami in Calabasas is just finishing up its services right now. Time for breakfast here… Shabbat Shalom.

6:30 am. All’s quiet on the Israeli front – or at least here in my darkened hotel room. This will be the fourth birthday I have spent in Israel. Birthdays post-High School on the Reform Leadership Machon and during the first year of Rabbinical School were part of year-long programs. A birthday present trip in 2004, shared with congregant Mark Wolfson, was purposeful (I had been away from Israel too long). This one, leading Or Ami’s first congregational trip to the Holy Land, is extra special because I get to spend it with my wife, children and dear friends from the synagogue.

Thursday’s Kotel (Western Wall) visit was familiarly distasteful and surprisingly touching.

It was touching because I placed prayers given to me by congregants including those of the Camerons, Erlangers, and Goldsobels. Our group authored our prayers at the Southern Wall excavations where moments before we walked on stones on which our Biblical ancestors tarried. In this same area, singing Shir HaMa’a lot, a Song of Ascension, we climbed steps leading to the gates (now blocked off) through which Biblical pilgrims entered to offer their thrice yearly sacrifices (on Sukkot, Passover and Shavuot). Then I placed my own which in part asked Makor HaChayim (the Source of Life) for blessings of health, safety, wisdom, tzedakah, openness and love for my family, my congregation and my world.

I felt the excitement of participating in a tradition that has captured the hearts of Jews worldwide and throughout the generations. Additionally, I stood at the Kotel with my sons and father-in-law as the boys for the first time placed meticulously written words in the cracks of the Kotel. Each searched for just the right place. Finally, I had to hold each on my shoulders so they could place it in a wider crevice 8 feet up. One son kissed the wall spontaneously, while the other donned the new tallit we bought for his upcoming Bar Mitzvah service to try it out in this holiest of places. Midor lador (from generation to generation). How moving to have three generations together in the place Jews for generations yearned to touch and pray!

Yet, the visit was familiarly distasteful because in the past I usually found myself agitated and turned off by the way this universal Jewish site has become transformed – for the worse – under the control of the ultra-orthodox. It has become, quite literally, an orthodox shul, in the most misogynist of ways. The women’s section, separated off by a mechitza (separation wall), is so small that our female participants could barely get a few moments to touch it. To be forced to experience this separate from other Or Ami participants, not to mention my wife and daughter, was distasteful and saddening. Rachel Isaacson, our Mishpacha Coordinator, along to help staff the trip, shared reflections from her experiences with Women of the Wall (a group pushing for the right of women to pray together at the Kotel with tallitot and Torah) was instrumental in helping some participants process these frustrating feelings. Additionally, the experience of ultra-orthodox Jews constantly walking up, begging for tzedakah, often specifically for yeshivot (orthodox study schools) which taught and worked against the right of Rabbis like me (reform Jewish) and Jews like me (egalitarian, religiously progressive) to pray and study the way we do, was distasteful. In the past, I visited the Kotel only because I was supposed to do so. I would choose a Southern Wall experience or visit a local synagogue of t’nuat Yahadut Mitkademet (Israeli Progressive Movement). Thank goodness that our progressive (non-fundamentalist), egalitarian (non-misogynist) religious perspective is increasingly taking root amongst the Israeli population (with PR reading “There is more than one way to be religious!).

Isn’t this the Israel I love? Rich with tradition; filled with contradictions. Love it, struggle with it, return to it again and again. Now that’s a birthday present!