Encounter at the Kosel

“Selichah?” She was a young Israeli woman in a long skirt and jacket, holding what looked like small, folded brochures. She offered them to me and my friend while chattering rapidly in Hebrew.

“Please, speak slowly,” we begged. She tried again, her speech this time exaggeratedly articulate. Could we say Tehillim for the current matzav — the “situation” as it was known — in the Land? She was handing out laminated booklets of small sections of Tehillim, hoping that the whole sefer would be said several times each day. The Sbarro bombing had taken place only a few weeks before. The Bais Yisroel explosion, the Rimon Café attack, others, were still to come.

She had approached the right people. We were eager, earnest, new to Eretz Yisrael and loving the way a stranger could walk up to us on the street and request that we daven for this wonderful country. We accepted the Tehillim booklets willingly.

“How long should we say this for?” my friend asked. “The whole year?”