by Tamar Wismeon

The night is calm, the weather surprisingly warm despite the late hour. A faint breeze filters through the sheltered courtyard, brushing over our hands and faces, as if to remind us, “Now is not a time to sleep but a time to learn.” White bulbous lamps break the darkness, their light reflecting off the open books on our laps, etching ripples in the Jerusalem-stone wall that props us up. Crickets, sheltered in the shadows, form a melodious accompaniment to the low murmuring of eighty young women in forty pairs studying a single text. Then our teachers take over, coaxing sleepy minds to remain open with startling insights, tempting us with the treasures of the Torah, inspiring us with their words.

The Midrash relates that on the night preceding the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, the Children of Israel slept. G-d Himself had to wake them. To make amends for this insensitivity to the awesome gift we were about to receive, we stay awake on Shavuos night, studying the Torah until shacharis.

In Jewish communities throughout the world, men (and, increasingly, women) gather together after the evening meal for lectures by noted speakers or study privately at home or in shul. The morning prayers are recited immediately after daybreak, after which the weary participants go home to eat a slice of cheesecake and fall into bed.

But Shavuos in Jerusalem is different. After the 1967 Six-Day War, when we regained the Kotel (the Western Wall) a few days before Shavuos, a special tradition developed: every year in the stillness of the night, Jews from all over the city walk to commemorate the festival at our holiest site. It is now four in the morning, and the star-speckled dark blue sky has barely begun to pale. The wind picks up, as it always does in the transition from night to morning. I shiver slightly and button my sweater, partly from the chill and partly in readiness for the journey ahead. It is still very dark when we begin our walk though the silent streets of Bayit Vegan, past empty playgrounds and blank windows. Making our way down a hill, we catch sight of others headed in the same direction, and we naturally fall into the same rhythm.

We pass schools and youth centers, from whose doors bubble teenagers in high spirits, forming whirling eddies as they converge in chatting groups and then drift apart again. From apartment blocks come couples pushing babies in strollers. We even spy the occasional grandfather, moving staunchly forward with the help of a cane. No longer just eighty students, we now form part of a stream of people flowing purposefully through the night.

At each conjunction of streets our numbers swell. The traffic lights switch dumbly between green and red, but with no cars on the road, we stream past them, unheeding. The screeching of wheels has been supplanted by the soft steps of feet. Parked vehicles and locked stores have dark and vacant windows, but the street is alive. At one particular intersection, near Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue and the Sheraton Plaza Hotel, I find myself poised on the edge of a wide road that marks the descent to the Old City. A few decades ago, I would have had to climb the ugly, square tower block beside me in order to catch a glimpse of the Kotel, which was under Jordanian control. But looking down the hill today, I see wave upon wave of bobbing heads flowing down into the valley and then up again towards the trademark walls of Jerusalem. Though the width of the road is filled with walkers, everyone seems to have enough space to move at his or her own pace within the constant motion of the others.

Jaffa Gate rises from the ancient soil, allowing us to pass beneath it. Just within the walls stands the Tower of David, whose name serves as a timely reminder that Shavuos is also King David’s yahrzeit (although the Citadel itself dates from a much later period). The crowd surges down and around the shuttered alleyways and shallow steps of the Arab shuk, coming to a halt among a crush of people waiting to pass through a sentry post. I am channeled through a tunnel-like passageway like a leaf in a current, my individuality submerged in the press of humanity around me, pulled by the power of a whirlpool.

Suddenly we burst out into the floodlit plaza. The Kotel towers high above, the tangible structure anchoring this surreal scene.

The Kotel plaza breathes with the small motions of hundreds of people attired in their finery, men and women watching with weary smiles as dawn breaks over their heads. The night has given way to a pink marbled horizon streaked with gold, and the Kotel is bathed in the light of a new day. Giddy from lack of sleep, I open my siddur with a feeling of profound fulfillment.

My Shavuos morning journey is unlike any visit I have made to the Kotel. There are no guided tours of visitors, clicking their cameras and posing for group shots. No buses and taxis jostling for space at the entrance. Few soldiers in sight. Just silent waves of praying figures, each of whom has walked for up to two hours to be here. Together we stand before the Kotel, as our forefathers stood centuries before us, awaiting the day when the Temple will be rebuilt and the sea of people who walk through the night to reach her will become an ocean.

Tamar Wisemon lives in Safed, Israel. Her article “Safed: City of Mysticism and Art” appeared in the April issue of The Jewish Homemaker. She writes for numerous publications.