There are places that epitomize the destruction: Six writers share the location in which  they touch the Churban

The Silent Cry

Riki Goldstein

The door swings open, and we step over the wooden threshold from the sunny Swiss village into another world: an ornate, perfectly preserved shul. I’m taken by surprise by the hushed, rarefied air of the sanctuary, so beautiful and so old, now silent from the echoes of sung and whispered prayers.

We walk forward down the aisle on the stone floor. Everything still stands in place: an impressive aron kodesh painted blue and gold, a pulpit in marble, an ample bimah in the center. Sconces filled with tall white candles hang down….

Above the aron, the morning sun streams in through a circular stained glass window. The ceiling rises above us…. The shul has been recently repainted and is in beautiful condition; all that’s missing is the congregation. It’s an emptiness that tugs at the heart.

—“Swiss Accounts,” by Riki Goldstein, Mishpacha, November 6, 2019

I grew up in the embrace of a beautiful shul where my family had strong roots. This gave me a sense of familiarity and belonging in shul, and a deep attachment to the davening.

On that sunny morning, in the two Swiss villages of Endingen and Lengnau, the shuls beckoned me into a time capsule — the skin and bones of a living, breathing community, now reduced to nothingness. I could touch the gilded columns and the marble and the velvet, the notice boards and charity boxes, sit on the seats in the ladies’ gallery. I could imagine the hardworking Jews who’d given all they could to build themselves a glorious beis knesses, back in 1847.

I stood in the space they had consecrated and longed to join the swell of voices that had once reverberated here — but there was only silence.

With the softest of hands and a molten heart, I caressed the shtenders and whispered a prayer. The visit ended when we backed out respectfully and locked the heavy double doors, leaving the beautiful shul to its sleep.

Our next stop was a shul housed in the tallest and most impressive building in the hamlet of Endingen. In 1761, 245 Jews lived here, by 1850, 990 are recorded. The entire village had no church — only a shul.

This shul too is impressive, with walls painted a dusty pink, regal arches, and a beautiful painting rising up above the aron kodesh. There is a marble lectern next to the aron. The paroches is an intricate one, embroidered by the women “with all their hearts,” for the shul’s dedication in 5611. Yet, the aron hakodesh stands empty. (ibid.)

Where hundreds once stood, as waves of “Barchu” and “Amen” rippled through the air with Swiss decorum, only something subtle yet special remains in the air. A list penned in black calligraphy of the “mizmorim” recited on special days still hangs at the front of the shul, with the name of its donor in silver letters. There’s a red velvet couch that held dozens of Moishelas and Shloimelas at their bris milah. The hand-embroidered paroches hangs over an empty aron kodesh; the shul seems to sigh in a heavy silence.

We daven a little, offering the shul a small comfort with the familiar words of “Mah Tovu,” and then we leave it behind.

Scattered across countries, towns, and villages, some forsaken shuls are like these, gloriously preserved, as if the chazzan could call out “Barchu” any minute. Others are in ruins, or, maybe worse — turned into mosques and museums.

And in Yerushalayim, at the center of the Earth, the most glorious shul of all time, where every Jew felt his heart open and his soul expand in prayer, also stands in ruin, silently weeping for a time that was — and awaiting what will yet be.

The Desolate Desert

Dina Lev

We landed in Phoenix on Monday morning, the arid landscape as foreign as if we had landed on Mars.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would have a child in a psychiatric inpatient treatment facility, but I did. When they invited us for Family Week, we packed our bags and went. It was the third day of Family Week, and we four families sat in a circle in that small room, peeling layer after layer of pain, supporting each other through the process.

As we stepped outside for some fresh air and solace, we caught sight of the setting sun in the Arizona desert. It seemed that a sun with a neon pink glow like this one must surely be hydrated by the thousands of tears that irrigate the Arizona sand. What else but the desert could be vast enough to hold that much pain? How many tears are absorbed every day by that silent sand?

Each day we processed another piece of the pain that is unique to families dealing with mental illness, until our insides mirrored the ache of the barren land outside; we felt its dryness in our throats, the unsaid words caught inside.

Marla, the group facilitator, went around the circle asking each couple how they might connect and heal after the day’s draining experience. Mark’s wife suggested that they take a drive through the desert, and suddenly we all felt the air suck out of the room as he answered in a hollow, distant voice, “Oh no…the desert depresses me…it’s so desolate…”

The room collectively caught its breath, and we held the silence reverently. No one expected it, least of all from stoic Mark, but once the words were out, we could not un-see the image.

The sadness and the endlessness became the sound and feel of galus. The aching longing of that desert, soaked with echoes of the pain within it, became the symbol of our national angst, mixed with the overarching pain of an entire world, estranged from its G-d. That desert is where my mind goes when I try to hold the vacuous, endless stretch of galus, peppered with glorious, deeply hued moments of beauty. It is what I see when I think about a deeply lost world trying to find its way and the beauty that comes from that struggle.

I think about the cactus plant, cousin to the national fruit of the “am k’shei oref,” and his upright back and stiff neck, which survives by retaining water in its thick skin.

I think about pain, about strength, about beauty, but mostly I think about longing, as vast as the open desert road.