I first saw the Western Wall diaries written by kabbalist Rabbi Yehuda Meir Getz some 30 years ago. It was a few years before Getz, then rabbi of the Western Wall, died suddenly. The contents of the diaries fill large, orderly notebooks with tens of thousands of lines in clear handwriting. Day after day, for 28 years (from 1968 to 1995), sometimes calmly and at other times in a state of great agitation, Getz wrote about what was unfolding at the Western Wall.
At the time, I met with him in his office on the third floor of a modest office building at one side of the Western Wall. He was bent over the diaries to help me with some research and was fascinated by what he was reading.
The first Western Wall diary was written over the course of 18 years by the first rabbi of the Western Wall, Yitzchak Avigdor Orenstein, during the British Mandate. He kept the diary until he and his wife were killed by a Jordanian mortar that hit the Jewish Quarter of the Old City just after the state was founded.
Orenstein described the yearslong dispute over the Western Wall, when Jews were battling for their status at the wall against the "status quo" forces of the British rule, as well as against attacks and riots by the Arabs directed by Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini. Orenstein's family had his diary published years ago and it was a cornerstone of research into that era.
Getz arrived at the Western Wall after Jerusalem was liberated in the 1967 Six-Day War, when the Jewish state was already in existence. But it was a time of internal struggles between rabbis and archaeologists about the boundaries of the prayer plaza and the excavation of the Western Wall tunnels, as well as between the Orthodox rabbis and the Women of the Wall and the Reform movement, who were advocating for egalitarian access to the holy site.
Now the 12 volumes of Getz's diaries are being published (online only, for now), and they tell the tale of the Wall during the first 28 years that followed the Six-Day War. They are an invaluable historical source, authored by an exceptional personality and a key figure in shaping the face and character of the most visited site in Israel.
Getz was born into a family of kabbalistic scholars and ordained a rabbi in his native country of Tunisia, where he also studied law. When he arrived in Israel, he wanted to live near the graves of two mystical sages – Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai and Rabbi Isaac Luria ("the Ari") – in the Galilee. He became the rabbi of Moshav Kerem Ben Zimra, located near the rabbis' graves. By day, he ran an orchard and the local primary school. He also completed officers' training with the Artillery Corps and was made a major. He would eventually be promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. At night, he would shut himself away to read Tikkun Hatzot, a nightly lament for the destruction of the Holy Temple.
In 1968, Getz was appointed rabbi of the Western Wall along with an Ashkenzi rabbi, Yosef Moshe Schechter. When the latter died, Getz remained alone in his post. The Western Wall tunnels became his second home. In each section of the Western Wall that his workers uncovered, he placed a Torah ark to mark it as a place of prayer and keep it from being turned into an archaeological or tourist site. Getz, who was also the head of the kabbalistic Beit El yeshiva, spent most of his nights in the synagogue he built inside the tunnels, along with a select group of kabbalah students.
His approach to life was mostly spiritual and less earthbound. He was a rabbi, an officer, and a mystic. He wore a black robe and carried a prayer book and a Bible in his pockets, as well as a pistol at his hip. He was one of the pioneers of the Jewish Quarter renewal. One of his sons, Avner, was killed in the battle to liberate the Old City in the Six-Day War. Avner's death was one of the main reasons why the Getz family moved to Jerusalem from the Galilee. Another son, Yair, was killed in the mid-1980s when an Arab truck driver hit him.
Getz spent all his life searching for the exact spot of the Holy of Holies, which he believed contained the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments and the Ark of the Covenant. One summer day, on July 22, 1981, he was seized with a great sense of excitement. Getz had located a gate facing Ein Ittam, the ritual bath used by the priests of the Holy Temple 2,000 years ago.
In his diary, Getz describes how he discovered a long underground tunnel behind the gate. It was dug into stone, flooded with water and mud, and led beneath the Dome of the Rock. The astonishing discovery was kept a secret, but not for long. The diaries describe how Getz let more people in on the secret. At first, it was the late Rabbis Ovadia Yosef and Shlomo Goren, and then Religions Ministry Director General Gedalia Schreiber and Religions Minister Aharon Abuhatssira and his successor, Dr. Yosef Burg. Finally, he informed former Mossad agent Rafael Eitan. Later on, then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and Deputy Prime Minister Yigael Yadin – an internationally renowned archaeologist – were informed. Motti Eden, a reporter for Kol Israel radio, was also brought into the circle.
Getz wrote: "I was seized with joy and trembling and I felt deep down that the next step after discovering the tunnel would be the arrival of the Messiah and the redemption of the Jewish people." He was convinced that the tunnel would lead him to the place where the Temple altar had once stood.
At the end of that day, Getz wrote down his feelings about the discovery of the tunnel: "I sat motionless for a long time, with hot tears pouring out of my eyes. I finally got up the courage and with God's help recited Tikkun Hatzot, as is our custom."
Archaeologist Meir Ben-Dov was less enthused about Getz's discovery. Ben-Dov tried to cool the excitement. He was under the impression that the tunnel was nothing more than one of the projects that British archaeologist Charles Warren had worked on in the 19th century. Ben-Dov warned Getz that it wouldn't be long before the Muslims discovered his excavation and recommended that Getz close up the entrance to the tunnel and forget about it. Getz refused. He pointed out a stone opening inside the tunnel and announced his intention of breaking through to reach the underground level of rock on which the Foundation Stone rests.
On Aug. 27 that same year, Kol Israel broadcast the momentous report about the discovery of the tunnel, which sent shock waves around the world. The Muslim waqf had already seen what was going on, and the report sparked holy riots and a violent clash in the tunnels beneath the Dome of the Rock. Groups of Muslims used the scaffolding the Religions Ministry had erected there to climb down into the tunnel. There, they fought with yeshiva students that Getz scrambled to the scene. During the clashes, Getz pulled out his gun but didn't fire it. That day, then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin decided to reseal the tunnel and put things back the way they were.
Getz was inconsolable. He was rushed to a hospital after he collapsed from exhaustion. In the ninth volume of his diaries, on Sept. 3, 1981, he writes: "My feeling at Tikkun Hatzot was close to that of my forefathers when they saw the house of our God go up in flames when it was destroyed [by the Romans]," he wrote. Nevertheless, he wrote, he must persevere and not let the disappointment break him.
Dr. Isaac Hershkowitz, a lecturer in Jewish Studies Faculty at Bar-Ilan University who is studying Getz's diaries, says that the books offer us our first glimpse not only at the life of "such an esteemed Kabbalist as Rabbi Getz, whose kabbalistic writings still haven't been made public, but also at his work table."
Hershkowitz says that thus far, "all the kabbalists left behind a … combination of theology and philosophy that doesn't give us a real look at their lives. Here we see a person [Getz] who on one hand experiences life as an ongoing redemption, and on the other argues with the plumber and the electrician, handles ongoing issues of security at the Western Wall, sweeps his front stoop, gives to the needy and the mentally ill, and sees no contradiction between these two paths."
"He oversees the 'resurrection of the holy presence' by making sure the Western Wall stays clean, and by working every day to expose the Western Wall tunnels. With all the sensitivity of a project like that, which he saw as bringing the redemption closer, he was [also] dealing with the rubble clearers and donkey suppliers who cleared the refuse out of the Jewish Quarter. At the same time, he was searching for the Ark of the Covenant, and everything is documented in his diaries, which are a rare and authentic document … and free of pretense."
Getz called his diary a "work log" and a "record of instructions and notes about what takes place in and around the Western Wall." According to Hershkowitz, his diaries address matters great and small alike. "Today I added a new 'profession' – plumber," he wrote after helping the man he had hired to fix the toilets. In another entry, he writes, "I changed the tablecloths and set up for the Holy Shabbat…"
Getz also describes unusual visits to the Western Wall.
"An ambulance arrived and out came a stretcher with a man covered in plaster lying on it. With great effort, he put his lips up to the stones of the wall and kissed them."
"A dust-covered soldier came up to me and told me about how he had miraculously survived … and disappeared for a few minutes so he could go to the Wall and thank his Creator."
He talks about a famous surgeon who, the night before an operation, felt moved to pray at the Western Wall so he could save the life of a person from Israel. Getz records the people who came to the Western Wall – dignitaries, presidents, and heads of state, as well as the poor and "a group of our Jewish brothers who are about to return to their country of exile in the United States," who stood at prayed and swore in English that "if I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its cunning." According to Getz, "even the beggars were silent and didn't bother them."
Every Hanukkah, Getz would gave various figures the honor of lighting the candles. Some were well-known, like Professor Yaakov Neeman, who lived in the Jewish Quarter, and some were laborers or security guards.
"This honor," Getz wrote, "is always moving, as we imagine the menorah of the Holy Temple, with a priest lighting its candles…" Not surprisingly, the rabbi's favorite menorah was not the only that was placed in the prayer plaza, but one that was deep in the tunnels, facing the approximate location of the Holy of Holies, which he set up every year in the place where his workers tried to open the tunnel eastward underneath the Temple Mount in 1981.
He described the Shabbat services as "toppling barriers and giving the spirit joy." On Sukkot, he and his wife, Esther, would move into a sukkah at the foot of the Western Wall. In 1990, when worshippers at the Wall were the targets of rock throwing, Getz was surprised at the "masses" who remained unafraid, and "filled the prayer plaza like I had never seen it before."
The national memorial ceremony, which takes place at the Western Wall on the eve of Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers of Israel and Victims of Terrorism – which among many others honored his own son, Avner – was particularly difficult for him. Ten years after Jerusalem was liberated, Getz read the president and the prime minister a lament he had composed for the 181 "sweet boys" who were killed in the battle for Jerusalem.
Getz was ambivalent about the Western Wall turning into a substitute for the Temple Mount. He did not visit the Mount, accepting the rabbinical ruling that Jews of our generation [the as-yet unredeemed] must not enter it. However, he differentiated between the Temple Mount, which "has always been" and the Western Wall, which was "of the past."
Getz passed away the same month as one of his great rivals, archaeologist Professor Binyamin Mazar. If it had been up to him, Getz would have expanded the prayer plaza to the south end of the Western Wall, but Mazar and the other archaeologists won out. If Mazar had had his way, archaeologists would have been responsible for excavating the entire length of the wall tunnels and would excavate the prayer plaza. Getz dismissed the science of archaeology, mainly when he was presented with facts that contradicted belief and the kabbalah. Mazar was not a fan, to say the least, of Jewish mysticism.
But Getz wasn't always nice. He once hit a photojournalist who tried to enter the prayer plaza bareheaded. Another time, he kicked out a priest who wanted to bring a cross into the plaza. A meeting with Jerusalem Grand Mufti Saad al-Alami blew up and ended with Alami slamming the door as he stormed out.
Getz's daughter, the writer and rabbinical court advocate Lily Horowitz Getz, points out the "stories behind the stones" in her father's diaries.
"He had a very strong spiritual side, but he wasn't ashamed to pick up litter. [My] father was the voice of the Western Wall, and a wall for many who sought his advice: barren women, couples who wanted to reconcile, a bereaved father who was angry at the Creator and wouldn't say kaddish [the mourning prayer] for his fallen son. Dad spoke to him heart to heart, and promised to say kaddish in his place if he didn't. There was a female soldier who had grown up thinking she was Jewish, and on the eve of her wedding discovered she wasn't. The rabbi [my father] helped her through a quick conversion process. There was a Muslim police officer who was afraid he'd be denounced as a collaborator. Dad managed to calm him down.
"He gave charity to a lot of people in secret, both Jews and Muslims. He knew the way into everyone's heart. Members of the [socialist] Hashomer Hatzair youth movement sat at his table alongside members of Neturei Karta [an extreme anti-Zionist haredi sect], hassidic Jews, [anti-hassidic] Lithuanian Jews, Circassians, and Druze. Secular and religious. Well-known public figures would come to consult him. His welcome, along with his simplicity and high spirituality, were like a magnet. He was a person who never stopped trying to improve."
