Walking the London Wall - Matot-Masei (Rosh Ḥodesh)
A few weeks ago, I spent the day with my sister walking along the route of the London Wall. There’s not a lot left of the London Wall, as it turns out - but it’s a kind of scavenger hunt to find the points at which the wall is standing and exposed. From when this wall was built, around the year 200 of the common era, it defined the shape of London - or Londinium, as it was then known. Jasmine and I are both Londoners, but neither of us have ever lived within the tiny area that the wall once surrounded. I commented to her along the way that it felt like London just burst forth from its walls, that it got too big to be contained and spilled forth across the land. At the time I was being facetious, but as we continued our adventure around the perimeter of Londinium, I learned that I wasn’t entirely wrong: large areas of the wall were demolished specifically to allow for traffic and building. Maybe it wasn’t quite the dramatic bursting ...