people at kotelBy Larry Gordon

We are in Miami Beach this week celebrating the engagement of our son Nison to Shayna Stern, a wonderful young lady, the daughter of Orly and Jeff Stern, longtime residents of South Florida.

Being here, however, does not, baruch Hashem, stop the calls from coming in suggesting a variety of story ideas. I’d say that possibly one out of twenty or so strike me as something the readers might want to learn about. For some reason, this is one of those stories.

I met Moshe Aryeh Lipschitz about nine years ago at a bar mitzvah in Jerusalem. I only met him because I was in a building where there were four bar mitzvah celebrations going on simultaneously and I wasn’t sure which one I was supposed to attend. Rabbi Lipschitz speaks a minimal amount of English so I was able to explain to him which family I was looking for.

I found the right party, and Lipschitz and I became quick friends. He used to travel to the U.S. frequently but has since slowed down. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t talk about the various subjects that he conjures up and gets involved in.

When I was in Israel over Sukkos, we met to discuss his several-times-a-week overnight trips to Meron. In that city he organizes the distribution of food packages to poor families. We help him out to the extent that we are able to, but then he called me last week to recruit my assistance in developing a course of action for his newest idea.

Rabbi Lipschitz is working with the chief rabbi of the Kotel, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, to raise sufficient funding for a weekly Kiddush on Shabbos morning at the Kotel. So what is the idea that stopped me in my tracks last week as we were about to leave for the airport and the trip down here?

Davening at the Kotel is a definite high point during the days and weeks we spend in Eretz Yisrael. While the bigger crowds assemble in the Old City on Friday nights, there are quite a number of folks who also daven there on Shabbos morning. But apparently there is no real Kiddush–and that issue is now being addressed by the chief rabbi of the Kotel.

You would think that the chief rabbi of the Kotel has other concerns and even headaches these days besides whether there is kugel at the Kotel on Shabbos morning. The biggest issue at the holiest site in Judaism is the persistence of the egalitarian Women of the Wall group that is determined to establish a place where women can conduct their own services that includes reading at the Wall from a sefer Torah.

The issue here is that the Kotel is run according to Orthodox halachah, and WOW, with the support of the Conservative and Reform movements, is determined to break the strict rules of Jewish law that govern the holy site.

The humorous and interesting thing about the continuing face-off between the women and the rabbinate is that if there weren’t this fierce opposition to the women’s prayer service at the Kotel, some say very few would show up in the first place.

But that’s a different story completely. This is about a knockdown, drag-out Kiddush–the Kiddush to end all Kiddushim–every Shabbos morning at the Western Wall, and we have been asked to assist in spearheading the effort to get this done. So I ask Rabbi Lipschitz what the plan is. After all, I am a veteran of Kiddush clubs and more conventional Kiddushim.

Before we get down to the menu and other details, I ask where the idea originated. He says that it was from Rabbi Rabinowitz’s office, evolving from the question of why the largest, most important, most solemn makom tefillah in the Jewish world does not have a Kiddush on Shabbos.

Yes, you’ve seen whiskey and cookies and sometimes even herring at the Kotel, usually when someone has yahrzeit. During the week, it might be a common sight, but it is certainly less so on Shabbos. And there are multiple reasons for this reality.

First of all, depending on where you are coming from, you will have to schlep most of the food a long way up and down those difficult and unforgiving steep hills. And then there is the focus of the current effort–providing a hot Kiddush at the Kotel for possibly several thousand people. Now that’s a lot of kishke.

It’s important to understand that many of the people who congregate at the Kotel on Friday night do not usually daven there on Shabbos morning. I don’t know what it is going to be like in the post-Messianic era, but right now if you want to start davening Shabbos morning at the Kotel at about 9 a.m., over the ensuing hour or two, the hot sun is going to be baking the top of your head, which is a big distraction and discomfort.

The Kiddush idea, which is in the planning stages, calls for a full Kiddush every week, provided they can recruit sponsors for these weekly culinary events. Rabbi Lipschitz says they are looking at a location adjacent to the Western Wall plaza where they can install at least two large warming ovens. The key, he says, is going to be lots of kugel and cholent trays when the funding is there, in addition to herring, cake, wine, whiskey, and so on. There is going to be a need for huge amounts of paper goods, so there is an opportunity right there for someone in that business.

At the end of the day, it looks like the U.S.–primarily New York–is being targeted for sponsors of Kiddush. So how many people need to be fed and how much is it going to cost? Let’s analyze this from several directions. I don’t think that most people visiting Israel are going to start praying on Shabbos morning at the Kotel for the kugel alone. It looks like at the beginning, the planners are aiming to set up a Kiddush for about 500 or so people. And for starters they are looking for total underwriting of $2,500 per Kiddush.

That’s more than your average shul Kiddush–sometimes. Then there is the slight dichotomy in the various cultures of what a Kiddush on Shabbos is supposed to be. In the States, for the most part, it is about cholent and one or two kugels, usually potato and lukshen. Here in Jerusalem, the centerpiece, so to speak, has to be the indigenous, blackened Yerushalmi kugel. Several other foods that you will probably see lots of at the future Kotel Kiddush are borekas, pickles, real sharp fishy herring, and sesame crackers with lots of hummus.

Whatever the menu, in the future you will not have to leave the Kotel area starved on Shabbos morning as you retreat to your hotel or apartment.

But there are still other issues that need working out. This is probably illustrated best by a Kiddush I actually attended at the Kotel just seven years ago. Rabbi Mordechai Machlis, an icon of hachnasas orchim in Jerusalem, hosts a minyan at 9:30 a.m. at the Kotel. I don’t know if the minyan continues today, but the one time I attended, it was followed by a Kiddush. It was mostly cold items–that is, a kugel that was once warm, crackers, herring, hummus, and so on. But then it was discovered that one of the minyan participants brought in a whole watermelon.

It was a potentially refreshing idea for a hot summer morning. But the person with the knife to cut the melon was not allowed in, for obvious security reasons. There were some negotiations and a standoff. Kiddush or no Kiddush, no knife was being allowed in. So the whole watermelon was carried out to the other side of the metal detector, sliced up out there, and then brought in to be enjoyed by the chaburah.

So is the kugel going to be cut up with plastic knives? Will the police allow those in? Rabbi Lipschitz thought about it for a moment and he said he was aware of the issue and it is being discussed with the powers that be.

You see, Israel has all kinds of problems–some big and some small, some tasty and some not.

Comments for Larry Gordon are welcome at editor@5tjt.com.

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