Dear Americans Visiting for Pesach, I’m Begging You …

Dear Americans visiting Israel for Passover,

If you want to feel closer to Am Yisrael than you’ve ever felt in your life—

If you want to feel more connected to your soul than you’ve ever felt in your life—

If you want to feel more connected to l’shana ha’ba than you’ve ever felt in your life—

If you want to pray like you’ve never prayed in your life—

If you want to feel more connected to God than you’ve ever felt in your life—

Then whatever you do, please join us one morning.

Most mornings I have the awful privilege of walking from our home to the Chatufim Tent outside the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem. I don’t go to protest, to make a point, to make my voice heard, or to participate in activities or events: I go to pray.

For the first six and a half years after we made Aliyah, most mornings, I went to the Kotel for morning prayers. What a privilege. I love the Kotel. But…

Today my soul is drawn to a different place. A different tent.

Once there was a place called the Ohel Moed, the Tent of Meeting, a this-world-yet-heavenly realm where Moses communed with his Creator. Today there are similar tents. Two of them are in Jerusalem, where almost every American visitor to Israel will be over the next ten days.

One of those tents is the Tent of Victory, where the stories are told of every soldier that fell in this ongoing war. Please God, may there be no more casualties, only nitzachon, only victory. I try to visit that tent from time to time. For souls in search of a life-shifting encounter, you may well find it there. It both is and isn’t of this world.

The victory tent is located between Cinema City and the Supreme Court.

The other is the Hostage Tent, where I go most mornings, when the Jerusalem air is quiet and still. To stand within its holy embrace, adrift amongst the faces.

Where …

There is an emerging custom: Psalms 121 and 130, followed by a near silent niggun—

Acheinu-Our Brothers. Kol Beit Yisrael-the Entire House of Israel.

Dear Americans visiting Israel for Passover,

As you have doubtless done before, you will visit the Kotel this Pesach. I urge you, whatever you do, please visit our tents as well. Your soul will thank you.

PS

Mah Nishtana

In the spirit of “Our brothers the entire house of Israel,” the following two-part suggestion has been offered for the Seder. 1) To sing Acheinu at the beginning of the Seder, before “All those who are hungry come and eat,” and at the conclusion, before “Next year in Jerusalem.” 2) To say the special prayer for the hostages, as well as the prayer for the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, before “V’hi sheamdah,”.

Chag kasher v’…