Pop culture hitting the wall

NECHEMIA MEYERS

Visitors to Jerusalem's Western Wall last week were surprised to see famous basketball coach Pini Gershon being photographed in front of the wall, where he was delivering an impassioned statement about the site's importance to the Jewish people.

Though hardly an expert on such matters, Gershon became a genuine Israeli hero after his team, Maccabi Tel-Aviv, twice won the European basketball championship. So he was chosen to spearhead the campaign to persuade all Israelis, and particularly Israeli youth, to visit the Western Wall.

It seems strange that such a campaign is required, as for quite some time after the unification of Jerusalem in 1967, the wall was constantly thronged with visitors. "But now," said Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, "there is a whole generation of young people who have never visited the wall. This is most unfortunate, as the wall is not primarily a tourist attraction. Its main role is to be a place where Jews from all over the world can come face to face with their roots and with the chain of Jewish continuity. Therefore, we must see to it that every Jewish child comes here in order to connect with his people's past."

Rabinowitz is not pleased with the fact that such a campaign is necessary. "However, in the situation that exists today, we must use contemporary methods to reach the younger generation," he declared.

In those years when Jordanian control of the Old City made the Western Wall inaccessible to Jews, other places served as alternative national shrines. Masada is a case in point. It was once customary for senior members of youth movements to hike through the Judean Desert to that hilltop redoubt. There, a group of 960 Jewish zealots from Jerusalem held out for three years against the Roman Tenth Legion, and then committed suicide, rather than become Roman slaves. The youth movement members would end their visit by reciting the famous poem, "Masada will not fall again."

Now, induction ceremonies of some army units take place on Masada and conclude with the same poem.

Tel Hai was another substitute shrine for several decades. It was there that the heroic Yosef Trumpeldor and seven of his comrades fell in defence of the Jewish settlement against Arab attackers, preferring to defend their home, rather than retreat. Here again, youth movement members would come to identify with the heroes of the past and pledge to follow in their footsteps.

Masada and Tel Hai have not disappeared from our collective memory, just as Iwo Jima and the Alamo remain in the collective memory of Americans. But in both the United States and Israel, the youth don't necessarily feel attached to the symbols and heroes of previous generations. Where Israel is concerned, younger people may be more interested in the ashrams of India and the peaks of the Andes than in Masada and the Western Wall, and their role models may well be contemporary pop singers and soccer stars, rather than dead icons like Trumpeldor.

It is hard for me to believe that messages from Pini Gershon, however impassioned, will bring them back to the Western Wall or increase their identification with the heroes of the past.

Nechemia Meyers is a freelance writer living in Rehovot, Israel.

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