Jerusalem – Har HaBayit – Kfar HaNokdim

Our students have enjoyed a bonfire and are now stargazing as they take advantage of their evening at the Bedouin Tent in Kfar HaNokdim. Tomorrow they will wake up while it’s still dark to hike up Masada in time for a sunrise Shacharit, before hiking in Ein Gedi and swimming in the Dead Sea. For my part, I am in Tel Aviv catching a few hours of sleep before my return travel. Rena Rosen is enjoying the desert with the kids, and has the accompanist phone if you need to reach her urgently.

Over the past couple days, the students have been in and around Jerusalem, focusing primarily on ancient days and the First and Second Temple periods, while also touching on October 7 and making time to do Chesed. As much as we structure LVN based on a chronological approach, we have found that we can’t begin a visit to Israel today without reflecting on October 7, the two-plus years since, and the impact it has had on the State and people of Israel.

What I’d like to share with you, though, is what we did this morning. As Jews, we often look to the Kotel as a center of spirituality, which it is for many, and we davened Mincha together the other day at Azarat Yisrael, complete with Josh Marin’s senior drashah, followed by visits to the Kotel Plaza, and davened there this morning as well.

But the Kotel is holy primarily by extension, because of its function as a retaining wall for the Temple Mount, Har HaBayit – the physical location of the First and Second Temples – and also known as Haram Al Sharif, The Noble Sanctuary, to Muslims. This morning we had the opportunity to go up to Har HaBayit, and it was a powerful experience – an experience that actually begin already yesterday and the day before as students first had to decide whether they wanted to go up. There are rabbinic opinions that encourage visiting Har HaBayit, rabbinic opinions that permit, and rabbinic opinions that forbid, let alone a variety of other societal and political considerations that different students took into account.

Some students chose to go up on Har HaBayit to connnect with Jewish history, or with Jewish spirituality, or to stand in awe of the place where the Temples once stood – and they thought about what it meant to do that in a state of seriousness and purity. Others commented on the beauty of the place, even if they had come to understand better the real estate at the center of many aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Still others chose not to go up, even as they respected their peers who did.

The experience itself was a study in contrasts and layers. The Temple Mount is so often associated with conflict, but the actual experience is one of peacefulness. What we can see today are Muslim shrines, built where our Temples once stood, and built above the stone that we see as the foundation stone of the world. We chose to go up as an ‘unidentified’ group in order to be able to move more freely and with less scrutiny from the Israeli Border Police who maintain security control and from the Waqf who manage the site on a day to day basis… and yet is was an intensely, intensely Jewish experience as our guides, Maya and Yael, helped us appreciate where the Second Temple had stood, and everything that happened there before and since. Layers in time, layers in space, and layers of complexity, alongside a feeling of awe and sublime beauty.

And your kids… soaked up every bit of the educational and spiritual experience of visiting. It was the kind of moment that Lev v’Nefesh is designed for, and they took full advantage of it, and I couldn’t be more proud.

I will fly home filled with that pride, and more than a little bit jealous of all they have ahead of them before I see them next in a few weeks. In the meantime, I know that they are in excellent hands with Marc, the madrichim, Rena and our rotating cast of accompanists, and our LVN educators. Our kids are right where they should be – thank you for helping them get there.