Pulsating beneath my fingertips was 4,000 years of history. The scratchy stone surface hummed with power; the power-apparently-to bring grown men and women to tears as they rocked back and forth in prayer.
         I have never considered myself a religious person. I don’t observe the Jewish Sabbath nor do I observe kosher dietary restrictions. My understanding of Jewish texts is limited to what I  could pick up in Hebrew school over the dull roar of crunching and chewing as  twenty uninterested 10-year-olds ate pretzels during snack time.
         Five years later, caught up in the surprisingly difficult task of being a 15-year-old girl, my life had slipped into a mind numbing routine: school, study, test, school, study, test, school, study, test. The inescapable cycle consumed me. My mind and body seemed to operate independent from my heart. My legs took me to class after class, my eyes absorbed page after useless page of knowledge about matrices and the color of dye traded by merchants across the Indian Ocean. My mind committed the facts and figures to memory and my hand scratched the pencil across the test paper, regurgitating the information I would purge from my brain not an hour later, making room for the next exam.
         My parents blamed my unusually studious behavior on themselves, under the impression that it was their high expectations that kept me locked in my room from 3:00 PM to 1:30 AM every school night. Out of love, and guilt too I presume, my parents encouraged me to “get in touch with my roots” in Israel for a summer-“it’s tradition” they said, as if that would be the deciding factor. Hesitantly, I agreed, not because I expected to find God, but because my parents made it seem like an obligatory milestone, and, more importantly, because I had finally found an opportunity to escape the dull routine of life in the suburbs.
       For a month I explored every corner Israel from the deserts to the beaches to the modern cities and the ancient ones. From Akko to Tel Aviv, the Negev Desert to the Golan Heights, from Haifa to Eilat to Lod, my friends and I were dragged from place to place, the memories of each day blurring into a single string of cities and skylines.
And then there we were: Jerusalem.
         Through the crowds of tourists and the clouds of dust I stared in fascination at the Western Wall, towering higher and higher with every tentative step. In the presence of something I had studied, something I had seen one thousand times over in family photo albums, videos, and textbooks I almost became nervous to see the real thing. I was not struck by its eternal glory, nor taken aback by its sacredness. In the presence of something I had been taught to revere my whole life, I felt awe was obligatory, as though my relative indifference was somehow treacherous.
         Anxiously, I awaited my turn, standing in the back of a line of devout followers. The woman in front of me hugged her prayer book to her heart, shutting her eyes tight, reciting the sacred text she, no doubt, had memorized since childhood. Still, though, she clutched on to that prayer book as if the ritual would be incomplete in its absence.
         As a single body, the women around me rocked back and forth in silent rhythm. I remained still, scared any sudden movement might upset the ebb and flow. Mesmerized by the wave-like motions, I almost did not notice that it was my turn to step forth.
         Hesitantly, I reached towards the wall, as the women before me had, groping awkwardly to find an empty crack in which I could shove the written prayers my family members had trusted me to deliver for them. I crammed the tiny pieces of paper into an already overflowing hole.
         Unaware of what to do next, I looked over to the woman beside me for guidance. Strands of hair from her wig fell carelessly onto her bowed forehead, pressed firmly into the stone. Dotted with perspiration, her lips trembled in concentrated prayer.
I mirrored her movements, pushing into the wall lightly with my palms and forehead. Suddenly, I felt it.
         The beat, unheard and unseen, to which the women bowed and bobbed, washed over me in waves. I was one of them. The wall connected us all somehow, beating with the strength of all of our hearts for all of our prayers. And I was linked, not only to the people around me, but to those who came before me. Each wave of movement, each beat of this shared heart, evoked a sensation , a déjà vu-this had all happened before.
***
         The year is 1984. My mother’s eyes jump frantically from face to face, desperately searching the crowds of tourists surrounding the Western Wall. I do not see her, I am her, living this memory as though it was my own. I feel my mother’s parched lips part, feel the frantic cry rip through her throat, “Baba! Baba!” as his eyes finally meet her own. Her heart drums against her ribcage, her chest tightens, her breath quickens, her legs pump eagerly, carrying the teenager toward the father she left behind in the Iranian Revolution as a 9-year-old child. Faster, faster, faster, she ran, and--

The year is 1492. I recognize the words tumbling out of their cracked lips; in the 523 years separating their lives from mine, these words remain unchanged. My ancestors surround me, praying for a better future in the Timurid Empire, where Iran stands today, after suffering through the persecution of the Spanish Inquisition.
***
My mind traveled further into the depths of history, unleashing countless stories passed down from generation to generation. It was at this moment I realized that, somehow, despite the vast stretches of time and changes in circumstance that separated them, each story was connected, each story led me back here, to this place, this wall.
The sandy stack of stones standing before me, crammed in every crevice with crumpled paper, not only carried the weight of my people’s history, but also that of my own. The wall represented strength and courage, yes, but it also represented passionate devotion. In times of peace, my family lived a fairly secular life, engaging in religious activity like they would any leisurely pastime. It was when they were under attack that their beliefs took on a new form: obligation. In their restless defiance, my family refused, time and time again, to surrender their spiritual belief system, compelled instead to defend it to no end. In this way, my ancestors, like all Jews, were forced by circumstance to convert their passion into obligation. This metamorphosis forged a culture of sacrifice and devotion stemming from the everlasting need to survive both physically and spiritually.
Passion fosters obligation and obligation fosters passion, they are eternally entwined, inseparable and often indistinguishable from one another in a confusing and intricate mess, bound together as tightly as the humans they connect.
  And so there I stood, at the beating heart of this network of lives, past and present, welded together by mutual passion and held in union by mutual obligation.