Years ago, when I was first in Jerusalem, I put a note in the Western Wall.
“Did you pray at the Wall?” my Israeli cousins asked me, with their native-born, knowing irony.
“Of course,” I rejoined. “Do you think I’m going to spend hundreds of dollars on an El Al ticket and not pray at the Wall?”
Pilgrims and tourists put private notes in the crevices of the Herodian stonework (of the outermost retaining wall of the Second Temple), with the petitions of their inmost hearts. What was written on mine?
Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of A Good Look at Evil, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, now appearing in an expanded second edition and as audiobooks. Dr. Rosenthal writes a weekly column for “Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column,” where she explores the situation of women. She thinks women’s lives are highly interesting. She’s the editor of The Consolations of Philosophy: Hobbes’s Secret; Spinoza’s Way by her father, Henry M. Rosenthal. She’s written numerous articles that can be accessed at Academia.edu .
