Back to work

I had waited 2,000 years to get back to work.

By HOWARD GOLDENBERG

AUGUST 11, 2016 16:09

Penitents at the Western Wall on Tisha Be’av in the 1970s (photo credit: SHLOMO AVAD) — Penitents at the Western Wall on Tisha Be’av in the 1970s

(photo credit: SHLOMO AVAD)

My family used to be employed in Jerusalem.

Unfortunately our family business was disrupted for a time by conflict and conflagration.

In what appeared to be arson, on the ninth day of the month of Av in the year 70 CE, our office was burned down.

The office I refer to was the holy Temple where my forebears would officiate in rituals of sacrifice, in mediating and arbitrating disputes, in quarantining suspected carriers of contagious disease and in blessing the people.

As the reader will realize, we worked as lawyers and doctors and priests. After the burning, my family was unable to go to our office for 19 centuries. Then in 1967 we returned. The other day I went back to the office where I resumed working in the family business.

It happened like this: My two eldest grandchildren, both aged 13, accompanied my wife and me on our current visit to Israel.

The boy, a pretty secular fellow whom we’ll call Jesse, walked down to the Western Wall with me. He understood the antiquity of the Kotel and something of its sanctity. Praying is not his specialty.

“What will I do, Saba [Grandfather]?” “I pray there, Jesse. Some people write their prayer on a slip of paper and insert it into a crack between stones.”

“What should I pray for, Saba?” “Think of the thing that you most want in the world, Jesse. Ask for that. It could be some deep and secret thing, something you wish for yourself or for someone else.”

Jesse has seen suffering. Earlier he saw a man begging. About the age of Jesse’s father, the man requested small change, blessing anyone who donated. The man walked on a distance from Jesse, turned away and covered his face with his hands. His shoulders shook.

At the Western Wall, Jesse pressed his lips against the glowing stone. He leaned his forehead against the Wall for some time, his lips moving. Then he posted his slip of paper into a tiny socket in the stone.

As we walked away backwards, Jesse stopped me and threw his arms around me. He said, “That was a really important experience, Saba. Thank you for taking me here. I love you, Saba.”

We rejoined my wife and Jesse’s cousin, whom we’ll call Ellie.

They too had prayed at the Wall.

Ellie’s fair features glowed: “Saba and Savta [Grandmother], that was wonderful.” My hands twitched, a spasm in unemployed muscles. I recalled I was a kohen; as a lineal priest, I was in the blessing trade.

I rested my palms on Ellie’s head. My fingers splayed and I searched for some voice. The voice shook as I recited the ancient words: “May God bless you and keep you…” Here I was back at the old workplace, here was Ellie, flesh of my flesh.

I had waited 2,000 years to get back to work. I anointed her fair head with my salt tears.

The writer is a storyteller and a physician in Australia, where he works in urban and in remote outback communities.