Tunnel Vision

Saturday, February 7, entrance to the Western Wall Tunnels
Sunday, February 8, Yad Vashem (Holocuast Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority)

Two tunnels in two days. One of them literally a tunnel, the other figuratively so. One of them ancient, the other fully modern. One of them touring backward through a painful history to the site of an Absolute Beginning, the other propelling forward through the worst tragedy of all to a Hopeful Future.

It was eerie at the entrance to the Western Wall Tunnels at 9:30 on a cool but pleasant Saturday evening. Dark and somber on one level, yet thrilling and inviting on another. I had been very excited for this opportunity.

Our tour guide Mark informed us that reservations for the underground visits must be made months in advance. This is hardly surprising, given that the Western Wall (Kotel) is to observant Jews the most significant site in the world.

Why is this so? Well consider the confluence of Biblical events that took place on or in the shadow of Mount Moriah (or the Temple Mount):

• The world is said to be created at the Foundation Stone atop the mountain;
• The first human, Adam, was created there;
• Abraham ascended the mountain in anticipation of sacrificing Isaac;
• Jacob was supposedly stopped at the mountain when he had his famous Dream of angels ascending to Heaven on a ladder;

After the First and Second Temples are constructed at this location (and ultimately destroyed), the Western Wall – of all the walls the most proximate to the “Holy of Holies,” the innermost sanctuary of the Temples – is the most sacred place to Jews.

Surely you don’t have to be a reverent person to appreciate the historical and archaeological significance of the Wall. As you wend your way through, the human phenomenons grab you as well. You ask yourself, how did people 2000 years ago move a 50- ton piece of stone? How are all these layers upon layers of wall constructed and supported? How did massive underground cisterms the size of a pretty decent sized house get built?

All that’s pretty interesting in a human sort of way. But here’s the thing—what starts with humans ends with G-d. Because as you wander through the tunnel, you notice that the Wall has progressively less height as it runs toward its intersection with Mount Moriah. And all of a sudden, instead of manmade blocks alongside where you’re walking, there’s the rough and natural edges of G-d’s creation.

I defer to my fellow and much more reverent Jews to know where exactly the most “sacred” point along the Wall is. I’m sure to most it’s the closest point to the H of H and to the onetime location of the Ark. But in a rather Benjamin Button sort of way, the Wall’s intersection with the mountain does it for me. If the goal is to express reverence for the wondrousness of G-d and his creations, there’s nothing more amazing to me than the confluence of something made purely and exclusively by G-d touching something that humans constructed and worship in utter appreciation, reverence and respect for G-d.

Call me an uninformed heretic, but I’m sticking to my story.

The new main building of Yad Vashem , on the other hand, is to me a tunnel that burrows through a dark time forward toward salvation.

The new museum complex is truly a work of paradoxical simplicity and complexity. Simplicity in the single main concourse off of which fork the utterly complex side halls that present progressively darker and darker stories of death and atrocity.

So why do I even dare suggest salvation? Am I insane, or simply stupid?

Probably a bit of both. But here’s why. As those who have attended are aware, the new Holocaust History Museum tells the story of genocide from the perspective of the people who both perished and survived. The narrative begins in the Germany and Europe of the early ‘30s; there are stories of proud members of German Jewry are presented, there are images of hopeful European Zionists.

The tale, as it wends its way through the ‘30s, is told a la Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, a steady and maddening descent into insanity. To the German Jews along the timeline, until 1938 the ethnic hatred subcurrent initially seems oppressive yet manageable. Even after Kristallnacht, while the psychopathy of Hitler has become clear, no one wants to believe that something so hideous as the Final Solution could even be considered, let alone implemented.

All along the way the story is told in part by the people of the Holocaust. This is the device that is so compelling to me. Hearing the voices of survivors describe what they witnessed and experienced, how they barely skirted death while their loved ones were killed en masse, makes the reality of it all undeniable. They are the eyewitnesses to the Crime.

If it happened to them, and they’re looking us right in the eye through the camera, then it could happen to any of us. And of course, that’s the point.

Except hearing their voices, their voices of now, not then, their voices of The Living, ultimately get us through the dark times as well. For listening to survivors sends the clear message to the demons of the past that, no matter how many of us you killed, you didn’t kill us all. And you didn’t kill us off. And you won’t, you never will, no matter how hard you try. Our spirit is indefatigable, our energy is persistent, our voices are insistent. We provide testimony as to what happened, and we will provide it again and again, as many times as it takes, to let the world know we won’t surrender. Never. Never again.

Two tunnels. One looking back, prior to catastrophe, back to the True Beginning. One looking forward beyond catastrophe, breaking through to a New Beginning. Both are part of us and always will be.