Most of my children wanted to put a note in the Kosel, but my ten-year-old hung back

The opening bars of my love song with Yerushalayim began when I was 17 years old and visited the city for the first time. As our cab wound its way up the foothills to the great, beating heart of the Jewish people, my father hummed a niggun about Yerushalayim, the deep baritone of our cab driver joining in. That first trip was a whirlwind of emotions, climaxing during the Kosel tunnel tour at the wall behind which the Kodesh Hakodoshim, the inner sanctum of holiness, once stood.

Two summers ago, my husband and I embarked on a repeat trip with our four children, all newbies to Yerushalayim (as least in passport-stamping capacity). The first day, we took an hour-long bus ride winding through Yerushalayim at a snail’s pace (a rite of passage) from the central bus station through the old city to the Kosel. After we davened Minchah and said Tehillim, most of my children wanted to put a note in the Kosel, but my ten-year-old hung back.

“I’m not sure how to put into words what I want to say,” she mused. She repeated this comment during almost every ensuing trip we made to the Kosel.