Midrash Rabbah on Deuteronomy preserves a strange detail about the fall of the First Temple. When the Babylonian conquerors carried away the holy vessels, they did not carry away the gates. The gates refused to be taken.
The tradition says the gates were so zealous for the honor of the Holy One that they sank into the earth on the spot where they stood, burying themselves rather than letting foreign hands drag them into Babylon to be set up as trophies. The prophet Jeremiah alluded to this when he wrote in Lamentations, "Her gates are sunk into the ground; He has destroyed and broken her bars" (Lamentations 2:9).
The gates are still buried there, waiting. When Israel is restored to Jerusalem in the fullness of redemption, the gates will rise again from the earth and return to their posts, recognizing the footsteps of the rebuilt sanctuary.
The Jewish people keep this tradition alive in the closing service of Yom Kippur, when the congregation calls out at the last hour, "Open for us the gate, at the time of the closing gate." The plea is not only about the present day's forgiveness. It is a memory of gates that chose exile in the soil over exile in a conqueror's capital, and a hope that those gates will rise on the day the Temple is rebuilt.