The tunnel certainly provided our group with all the requisite touristy amusements: knee-deep water to slosh through, the required use of flashlights, the mystery of ancient engineering feats . . . But what I remember most about my visit to the Shiloach Tunnel, built in the sixth century BCE by King Hezekiah under the City of David in Jerusalem, is the story of its construction. Over a period of two years, two sets of workers carved out the tunnel simultaneously from opposite sides until they met in the middle, allowing water to flow through.

As our group wound its way single-file between the clammy walls, our little lights bouncing off the ceiling, the water, each other, the guide drew our attention to the arched furrows left in the walls by the forward motion of the workers’ axes. I remember running my hands over the furrows and thinking of the people wielding those axes, and the long and lonely path they had to cut through the darkness of the earth. And then, at last, the moment when muffled voices were heard, and, infused with a new energy, the workers cut through the last bits of rock towards a reunion—the point where the inverted arches meet.

The three weeks before the 9th of Av are a time described as “between the straits,” when we mourn not only the destruction of the Temple, but two thousand long years of spiritual distance and estrangement. When contemplating the constriction of exile, the dark stretches of our history when we are afforded only a narrow tunnel vision, I cannot help but remember the Shiloach Tunnel.

And it would seem that when approaching a narrow time or a narrowness within our own souls, the quickest and best way through is the way that leads towards each other.

Devora Levin,
on behalf of the Chabad.org Editorial Team