Eliezer Sirota
By Larry Gordon
It’s the greatest outdoor shul in the world. For people who have a proclivity for davening outside, there is nothing like it anywhere else. In New York, praying in the backyard or on the front porch of your shul is not viewed favorably, though some people just can’t help it; they do it of necessity.
For those types, davening at the Kotel—morning, noon, or night—is a dream come true and Divine service right there under the stars. You cannot get more of an outdoor feeling than when you are standing here in the morning before the sun does away with the shadows and there is nothing except about 90 million miles between you and the burning late-morning Jerusalem sun.
Friday night comes alive here in an inexplicable fashion. Shabbos Nachamu, a breakout Shabbos of sorts, saw what was, according to residents here, an unprecedented number of people streaming to the Western Wall and its adjacent plaza. There may have been 200 minyanim taking place side by side, almost simultaneously, without any separation between them.
I found a chair in the midst of the bustling crowd here last Friday night, keyed in on this aspect of what was occurring, and tried to listen intently. Ba’aleitefillah and chazzanim are leading their groups, projecting and even shouting the davening for their people to hear. Different parts of the service are heard emanating from various directions. Some are singing at the top of their lungs, others are reciting the silent Amidah.
It is difficult to hear oneself think, but at the same time no one is disturbed or bothered. Everyone is doing his thing, silently or not-so-silently davening, while this audible crescendo plays itself out as if it were high-definition human telephonics. On top of that, there is the circle-dancing, some flag-waving, some are carried on others’ shoulders, and a number of other things that would be considered an annoyance and distraction under conventional circumstances.
But not here at the Kotel on Friday night. Here there is an unusual type of unity that is automatically or perhaps even magically invoked, and despite the noise and disruptions, everything is good, even perfect. It is as if every minyan is in a sense intertwined with the one next to it so that no one seems perturbed or even distracted. Everything is just fine though circumstances would usually dictate otherwise.
During the week, things at the Kotel seem to have become somewhat tame. The hordes of regular charity collectors who I’m sure have been stationed here for decades are mostly gone. I thought I noticed that change the first weekday that I went to daven in my open-air, front-porch, back-porch shul all rolled into one. These men provided this place with a rhythm, style, and a place to unload your shliachmitzvah money.
The group that I was first introduced to about 25 or so years ago became like family. They were always there and we always gave them a few dollars, because, well, they were there. They anticipated and expected it. It became something of an obligation and there was just simply no way out. The way it worked for all those years was that you’d better have some money on you, especially when you appeared there for the first time. I recall watching these men work together, identifying their marks, and then moving in on their targets.
Most of us are just targets based on our being. They can spot us in a second or less—someone new, not local, with that fresh New York look on our faces. Maybe it’s not only that facial expression of ours but also the way we dress. They just got us.
I did see someone I was looking for. Eliezer Sirota has great recollections of meeting and conversing with my father on many of those mornings that he spent here davening and contemplating our unique connection to this place. Though I hardly saw any of the old-guard Kotel crowd as I stood there in tallis and tefillin last Monday morning, all of a sudden, Sirota walks by and into my line of vision.
We speak in a mixed Hebrew and Yiddish. Like so many others with whom I am acquainted on some level here in Israel, the first word that is directed at me is usually, “Yahrzeit?” They are accustomed to seeing me here in Jerusalem on my father’s yahrzeit, which is right in the middle of Chanukah.
But it is very un-Chanukah-like this time of year. On Chanukah, it can be freezing, there can be a threat of snow, and often it is raining, although sometimes it becomes mild and sunny, hitting the 70s. What we would not have given for a little bit of that kind of weather this week! Just talking about rain or snow would have been a relief.
Eliezer Sirota rights himself immediately. “Der Tatte fleg kumin in zummer,” he says. “Er hut gahut yahrzeit demultz.”—“Your father would come in summer; he had yahrzeit then.” And he was right on. My parents were usually here in the summer—sometimes through both July and August. My father had yahrzeits for his parents in Tammuz and the end of Av. So he makes an observation that I am trying to follow in these giant footsteps by being here both in summer and winter.
But then we shift subjects. It looks like his entire chevrah that used to have the Kotel under siege is gone. Yes, he says, nodding his head in agreement. The police cracked down and cleaned the place up, he says. The authorities have the place under surveillance and they do not want a major tourist attraction—not to mention the greatest outdoor shul in the world—to be a place where people are harassed and always asked for money.
Eliezer Sirota is now sitting at a shtender near the doorway between the very hot outdoor Kotel plaza and the air-conditioned inside area. There is no question that even back in King David’s time, this was a cool place, but not as cool as the air-conditioned inner caves that dot the area where many people choose to pray.
I want to give Sirota a few dollars as usual, but he waves me away with a hand motion. He tells me not to make it too obvious because he doesn’t want to be banned from the Kotel area. We managed to quickly conduct the transfer. I’m not passing judgment on the others who were once regulars here and are now plying their trade elsewhere, I’m sure.
I took a photo of Sirota a few years ago and ran it here in the paper. This time I asked him if I could take the picture and use it in the paper. In Yiddish he said, “You took it once before so I see no reason why you can’t take it again.” I know for sure that he never sees this paper, so I asked him how he knows that. He just says that he heard. I really don’t know where the others have gone, but I was glad that somehow Eliezer Sirota was hanging in there. For me, he is a fixture at the Kotel and my connection to an important past.
Comments for Larry Gordon are welcome at editor@5tjt.com.