In Jerusalem, their eyes, their bodies, their lives tell you nothing. Some are bound up with the military or political establishment, while others are disengaged from community, individualistic, even isolated. All yearn for Divine illumination, all have dealings with teachers of mystical texts. And it is not irregular. The kabbalists mystics of Jerusalem are not compelling. The ordinariness of their callings, the commonness of their concerns, make it inappropriate to refer to the mystics of Jerusalem. There is no special sect. Hidden truths or haunting spirits pervade rabbi, housewife, and scientist, from past, present and future. To the mystic, Jerusalems compressed layers of civilization remove their crusts and reveal the essence. It is this Jerusalem to which each of its residents is sometimes heir.
I AM a night worker, apologized Rabbi Meir Yehuda Getz (1924-1995) to the voice on the other end of the telephone, I cannot make an appointment for 8:30 in the morning.
The voice insisted. The metallic, slow, incessant whining of the muzzein, calling Arabs to prayer, floated through the windows of Rabbi Getzs office overlooking the Western Wall. The distressed women in the antechamber tapped their fingers and wrung their hands, waiting restively for the rabbi. A Torah scroll in the ark to his right, kabbalistic volumes on the shelf to his left, looked down upon him.
No, you see, I am a night worker. Let us make an appointment in the afternoon, between 1:00 and 4:00, when I am at my office. All right? Shalom.
The late Rabbi of the Wall hung up, smiled jovially, explaining that distraught women, after unburdening themselves in prayer at the Western Wall, search for someone to help with personal, family, or medical problems. After all, this rabbi of the Wall coordinated Bar Mitzvahs, supervised tourist photographers, ensured a steady supply of yarmulkes, prayer books, and Psalm manuals why shouldnt he become a social worker and confidant, too?
It was good typecasting.
Meir Yehuda Getz, from Tunisia, was settled in himself, secure, warm, vigorous; of lusty voice and good humor, with eyes like John F. Kennedys. One eye peered straight, the other was cocked slightly at an angle. One eye attended to administrative detail and personal perplexity; worldly affairs. The other attended to details of a different kind, problems of a larger scope; other-world affairs.
Meir Yehuda Getz, remember, was a night worker.
DIVIDE the hours between sunset and sunrise exactly in two and you arrive at midnight, according to Jewish law. Exactly then it may be 11:30 p.m. in the winter or 12:15 a.m. in the summer the night watchman at Rabbi Getzs office telephoned him at home. Rabbi Getz answered, telling the watchman, who doubled as a beadle, to proceed. He trekked uphill to the rabbis home in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalems Old City, then accompanied him to the mikveh.
From there, they entered a five-foot-high cavern adjacent to the Western Wall. They penetrated the blackness of the cavern, walking deeper and deeper. If you have ever gone there at that hour, it is silent, spooky, sacred. Finally, they arrived at a site nearest to the ancient Holy of Holies the innermost sanctum of the Temple.
At this hidden spot, on a sloping stone floor, rested a small lectern, ark, and table, each overlaid with red velvet, each overshadowed by the massive stones of the Wall, themselves overlaid with iridescent patina moss. It was all illumined by a twenty-five watt bulb.
Here, Rabbi Getz sat at midnight, six days a week, reciting the Midnight Restoration, the tikkun hatzot lamentation for the destruction of the ancient holy Temple and supplication for its rebuilding.
Here, he recited kabbalistic devotions, completed in not less than 75 minutes, uttered in Jerusalem since the establishment of the Beth El Center of Kabbalah in 1727 and continued by Rabbi Getz from shortly after Israel recaptured the Western Wall in 1967 until his death in 1995.
Then Rabbi Getz returned to his office, which was silent and still, irradiated with the amber and white light flowing from massive lamps overlooking the Western Wall. The atmosphere was wondrous, intangible splendorous as Sabbath serenity. Impossible to describe, says Rabbi Getz, but once accustomed to it, you cannot live without it. It is not something psychological; it is there, no, here real.
RABBI Getz would unstrap his loaded pistol (he was in Arab East Jerusalem in the wee hours of the morning, and lost two sons in Arab-Israeli wars) then the study of Kabbalah would begin, to last until dawn, be it 4:30 a.m. or 6:10 a.m.
Sometimes Rabbi Getz studied alone, other times with fellow mystics. Every night at 2 a.m. a short hobo-like man with reddish beard interrupted him. This man made it a habit to walk nightly from the Shaarei Chesed neighborhood of Jerusalem to recite the Morning Blessings (birchot ha-shachar) for all present.
He left his fortune, offspring, and siblings in Canada. No matter how large your bank account, you cannot purchase one extra minute on this earth. I am in Israel to do what I was meant to do. Shortly after greeting Rabbi Getz, he would descend to the plaza of the Wall, arrange seating and coffee for the early morning worshippers. The cabalists returned to their studies.
How long does it take to master Kabbalah? a visitor asked Rabbi Getz. His grandfatherly eyes closed, his voice lowered to a whisper: Decades. Who is fit to study it? Rabbi Getz produced a list of fifteen prerequisites: cleanliness; marriage (and keeping ones wife happy); love of Jews; punctilious observance of the Torah; controlled temper; small doses of food; small doses of sleep; discipline; not slandering and not talebearing; not ogling women; unceasing joy; earning ones own living; scheduled Torah study; devotion to friends; humility. Most important of all: Why study Kabbalah?
Rabbi Getz would not answer.
Hesitantly, with trepidation, the visitor offered: Perhaps . . . to incubate cosmic energy to sustain the universe?
Rabbi Getz nodded almost imperceptibly.
In the affirmative.
