The rock in
question was being tightly held and it was in my face. And he was crying as he said these words.
It was my first
encounter with the rock lover, who was a cousin by marriage, and it took place
somewhere in the middle of Rechov Panim Meirot, Mattesdorf in front of my building
one night close to midnight in Menachem Av 1978.
And how long did
he go on like this?
We’re talking participles
here not past tense, so while strictly speaking the initial encounter may have
been a mere three hours or so, the echo of if you don’t love this rock
has reverberated in my head these past thirty-five years or more accurately,
my heart.
And it just wasn’t
stam a rock either.
My cousin isn’t
some kind of a left-wing nature freak reduced to emotional outbursts at the egalitarian
thought of being one with the minerals. He had served in IDF and he wasn’t unnerved by
the Arabs much less a rock.
In fact, that it
looked like a rock and felt like a rock was probably as close as this object
got to being a real rock. In his
eyes it may have been no more than a metaphor because the rock as such was
merely a material representation of the kedusha that is inherent in every
aspect of Eretz Yisroel.
So why did he
cry? To this day I’m still not sure.
He may have been
overwhelmed by a kedusha that burst forth from this rock that was as
tangible to him as if it were five star Fourth of July fireworks display. Or maybe it was that despite this palpable kedusha, all I saw at the time was a rock.
Whatever the
reason, much like the incessant drop after drop of water that Rabbi Akiva
witnessed chipping away ever so microscopically slowly at the rock that he was
observing, those tears have had much the same effect on me over time. It is as if they were eye drops because whereas
my eyes have deteriorated with age in the ensuing years, the memory of those tears have
ameliorated my vision to such an extent that I see now what he saw then.
But no matter
how the story ends it all starts with the rock.
How many times
have you been waiting at Ben Gurion Airport to board a flight back to the
States together with yeshiva bochurim coming home after their two year de rigueur pre-Lakewood
stint at a yeshiva in Israel, seminary girls chattering away about the various
trips they were taken on during their year at sem, and young couples returning
(with a number of young children in tow) after spending the first five or six
years of married life in Eretz HaKodosha?
It’s the same
story every time. No one turns their
head for one last long look at what should have been emotionally impossible to leave.
Not one
tear.
Demonstrations
of emotion, such as they are, are reserved for reactions to announcements informing
the assembled masses that it is forbidden to be bring any drinks on the plane.
One can sit in
yeshiva in Eretz Yisroel ten years and more while making all kinds of progress
in lomdus and ruchniyas and when he returns home he’s a much improved version
of the person who arrived ten years earlier.
But all of your accomplishments notwithstanding, if you
don’t love this rock you’ll have missed the essence of the whole experience and you won't even have the sense to cry.
