In this weeks reading, I was really interested in the discussion of ‘hillula,’ or pilgrimage. Prior to this reading I was aware that there were pilgrimages made to saint’s shrines in Judaism, but most of the previous reading focused on Muslim pilgrimages. I was interested to learn about the similarities and differences between the types of pilgrimages made, and then the prayer that happened at the actual site. I thought this was particularly interesting since previous readings had discussed Jews and Muslims praying at the tombs of saints together. As it turns out, the pilgrimages themselves are fairly similar, with the main differences of the presence of candles in Judaism and the organization of pilgrimages in Islam being the main differences we discussed in class. The presence of candle lighting stood out to me, because in Judaism one lights a candle on the anniversary of a loved ones death to commemorate their yahrzeit. It is a very special thing, so to me it seemed weird that one would do the same for a saint.
After spending some time thinking about this, I remembered a conversation I recently had with my grandfather. He was explaining to me the importance of religion in family. He told me that while family was the most important gift in life, religion is central to the way they connect and live their life. At the time, I wasn’t sure exactly what he was talking about, but in the context of the candle, it makes more sense. Families would make pilgrimages together and prayer to saints was a central aspect of all of their lives. Saints were seen as pathways to God, so maintaining a strong relationship with them was incredibly important. At the same time, if saints could communicate with God, it is also possible that they could communicate with family who had passed over and this brings my grandfather’s explanation full circle. I think that at first I had a hard time accepting the idea of commemorating the yahrzeit of a saint because I don’t fully understand the relationship that these individual’s have with these saints. Putting that aside, once I could acknowledge the legitimacy of these relationships, I was better able to understand the importance of the hillula in general.
The chapter on performance also plays a major role to me. I thought the metaphor of a performance was an interesting choice because despite the obvious similarities, a performance implies a falsity that I don’t believe the individuals praying to these saints would identify with. Weingrod looked up the definition for performance, which he found to be “dramatic entertainment,” however I would argue that there is an aspect of performance that takes you into another world, another story, one that is not in fact your own. That results in a false reality during the course of the performance, that ends once the actor is finished. In the case of the hillula, I don’t think those participating would separate their prayer from the rest of their life. Going back to the idea of the candle, for many of these individuals, prayer is at the center of their life.
