The Western Wall was even more breathtaking than it looked in photographs. The morning sun glistened off the towering limestone blocks while visitors of all ages and cultures, even soldiers in uniform, stood in prayer. My best friend, Ruth, and I hurried to the area where the women gathered, excited to pray at the foot of the Temple Mount, where our Jewish ancestors had felt closest to God.
In a little room to the right, hundreds of prayer books of different colors, sizes and languages were stacked. I grabbed one with Hebrew and English and stood next to Ruth, who’d brought her own from home, a siddur with a worn brown cover that had belonged to her mother, Sarah.
Tufts of greenery sprouted from cracks in the mammoth stones, along with folded notes containing prayers. I left a note myself, asking God to help me find my beshert—my soul mate. Ruth placed her own note in the Wall and bowed her head, her eyes closed, deep in devotion.
READ MORE: MY PRAYER AT THE WAILING WALL
“What did you pray for?” I asked when she was finished. Ruth wouldn’t say. That was unlike her, but I respected her privacy.
“I feel so at peace here,” she said.
Something had been on Ruth’s mind, that I knew. We’d been best friends since the third grade, and there was little we could hide from each other.
There weren’t many Jews where we were from in Iowa—and with names like Ruth Siegel and Eve Smalheiser we stood out. We had quickly bonded over our shared faith and family traditions, Shabbat dinners and our Bat Mitzvah lessons. We talked often of visiting Jerusalem one day.
“We’ll pray together at the Western Wall,” Ruth promised me when we were kids. “You’ll see.” Now we were both 20 years old, having come to Jerusalem sooner than we had dreamed.
We spent the rest of the day visiting the holy sites of Jerusalem, places we had read and dreamed about for years. But back at our hotel, Ruth flew into a panic. She tore through her bag, opened the drawers, dropped to the floor to look under the bed. “My prayer book!” she said. “It’s gone!”
“Let’s check again,” I said. “It must be somewhere.” We frantically looked around our room, until we ran out of places to look.
“Maybe I left it on one of the buses we took,” Ruth said.
We called the bus company, but no one had seen it. Ruth made her peace with the loss. “Maybe my book’s gone to someone who needs it more than I do,” she said.
I had to give her credit; she handled it with more grace than I would have. That was Ruth, though. Always one to focus on the blessings she had, not on the things she lost. We left Jerusalem with beautiful memories, hoping to come back someday.
I thought that my return trip would be with Ruth. Maybe with our future husbands, if my prayers were answered. Perhaps we’d both even make aliyah, or emigrate to Israel permanently.
I never thought that a year after our time in Jerusalem, I’d lose my best friend to cancer. I had no idea that Ruth was sick until the end, but she’d been fighting it for a while. Now I understood what she had prayed about so solemnly at the Western Wall.
I returned to Jerusalem alone. Still in mourning, approaching the first anniversary of her death. I did the only thing that I felt would help me with my grief—I returned to the Wall, the place where Ruth and I had felt such peace.
Those weathered limestone blocks were as I remembered them, gleaming in the hot sun, their cracks filled with paper prayers. I approached the Wall and asked God to help me through my friend’s death. But all I felt was sorrow. Without Ruth it just wasn’t the same.
I ducked into the little room to the right of the women’s prayer area. I combed through the stacks of prayer books, looking for one written in both English and Hebrew. My hand brushed across one with a brown cover, its faded title in English. I pulled it out and returned to the Wall outside, my heart heavy with my thoughts of Ruth, the memory of her praying beside me. And I flipped open the book.
In that moment, joy and gratitude replaced my grief. I didn’t feel alone.
Written inside the worn cover were two names. Names of people I knew. Sarah Goodman Siegel and her daughter, my best friend, Ruth. Of all the books I could have chosen, I had found Ruth’s siddur. Or had it found me?
