The night is calm, the weather warm despite the late hour. A faint breeze filters through the sheltered courtyard, brushing our hands and faces, as if reminding us, “Now is not the time to sleep, but time to learn.” White bulbous lamps break the darkness, their light reflecting off the open books on our laps, etching ripples in the Jerusalem-stone wall that props us up. Melodious crickets accompany the low murmur of eighty young women in forty pairs studying a single text.

Our teachers coax sleepy minds to remain open with startling insights, tempting us with inspiring Torah tidbits and treasures.

The night preceding the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, the Children of Israel slept. G-d Himself had to wake them up the next morning. To make amends for this lackadaisical insensitivity to the awesome gift we were about to receive, we stay awake on Shavuos night, studying Torah until dawn.

In Jewish communities throughout the world, men (and increasingly, women) gather after the evening meal for lectures by noted speakers, or study privately at home or in shul. The morning prayers are recited at daybreak, after which the weary participants return home to eat a slice of festive cheesecake and fall into bed.

But Shavuos in Jerusalem is special. When we regained the Western Wall a few days before Shavuos in the ‘67 Six-Day War, a tradition developed.

In the stillness of the night, Jews from all around Jerusalem walk to commemorate the festival at our holiest site. It is now four in the morning, and the star-speckled dark blue sky has barely begun to pale. The wind picks up, as it does in the transition from night to morning. I shiver slightly and button my sweater, partly from the chill and partly preparing for the journey ahead. It is still dark as we trickle forth through Bayit Vegan’s silent streets. Making our way down a hill, we catch sight of others headed in the same direction, and flow into the same rhythm.

High spirited bubbling teenagers emerge from schools and youth centers, forming whirling eddies as they converge in groups and then drift apart. From apartments doorways appear couples pushing babies in strollers. We spy an occasional elder, moving staunchly forward with a cane. No longer just eighty students, we are now part of a people stream making its way through the night.

At each junction our numbers swell. The traffic lights switch dumbly between green and red, but with no cars on the road, we move on ahead. The whirring of wheels is supplanted by the soft steps of feet. Parked vehicles and locked stores have dark and vacant windows, but the street is alive. At one intersection, near Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue and the Sheraton Plaza Hotel, I find myself poised on the edge of a wide road that marks the descent to the Old City. A few decades ago, I would have had to climb the ugly, square tower block beside me to catch a glimpse of the Kotel, then under Jordanian control. But looking down the hill today, wave upon wave of bobbing heads cascading into the valley and up again towards the walls of Jerusalem. The full width of the road is filled with walkers, yet everyone seems to have enough space to move at his or her own pace within the constant motion.

Jaffa Gate rises from the ancient soil, allowing us to pass through. Just within the walls stands the Tower of David, a timely reminder that Shavuos is also King David’s yartzeit (although the Citadel itself dates from a later period). The crowd surges down and around the Arab shuk’s shuttered alleys and shallow steps, coming to a halt among a crush of people waiting to pass through a sentry post. I am channeled through a tunnel-like passageway like a leaf floating in a current, my individuality submerged in the flood of humanity around me, as in a whirlpool.

Suddenly we burst out into the floodlit plaza. The Kotel towers above, a tangible structure anchoring this surreal heavenly scene.

The Kotel plaza breathes and reverberates with the motions of hundreds of people dressed in their finery, men and women watching with weary smiles as dawn breaks over their heads. The night has given way to a pink marbled horizon streaked with gold, and the Kotel is bathed in the light of a new day. Giddy from lack of sleep, I open my prayerbook with a feeling of fulfillment.

My Shavuos morning journey is unlike any other visit to the Kotel. There are no guided tours of foreigners, clicking cameras and posing for group shots. No buses and taxis jostling at the entrance. Just silent waves of praying figures, each of whom has walked for up to two hours to be here. Together we stand before the Kotel, as our forefathers stood centuries before, awaiting the day when the Temple will be rebuilt and the sea of people who walk through the night to reach her will become an ocean.