This Drash is about sacred space: what it is, where you find it, how you get there, what you do when you get there. All questions. No answers.
Think back to the moment when you first woke up this morning. Your eyes may not have been open yet, but you knew you were awake. What were your first thoughts? Be honest. Raise your hand if you were thinking, “What will I do today to make the world a better place?” “I wonder how many acts of loving kindness I can fit in today?” Or maybe you had a quick, intimate chat with God before your morning coffee?”
No? Let me try again. How about, “It can’t really be morning already!” “I wonder how much longer I can stay in bed and still get to shul by 11:30.” “Twenty people are coming for lunch and we still haven’t cleaned up the mess from dinner.” “We must have the noisiest kids in the world. And how come they only sleep past 7 AM on school days?”
Hang on to those thoughts.
Our parashah begins with these words: “You shall instruct the Israelites to bring you clear oil of beaten olives for lighting, for kindling lamps regularly – the Ner Tamid.
Our synagogues today also have a Ner Tamid, although it is usually lit by electricity, not olive oil. There are a number of similarities between our chapel and the desert Mishkan or the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. Our synagogue also has an aron ha-kodesh; our arks upstairs are also covered with a parochet; our table is like the altar; at least one sefer Torah has a choshen, a breastplate; instead of offering God sacrifices, we offer up our prayers, many of which were words recited by the Cohanim. Many synagogues have a decorative seven-branched menorah.
The word for Temple, Beit Mikdash, comes from the root Kadosh, which means holy. According to my dictionary, holy means “belonging to or coming from God or set apart to a sacred use.” We use many words from this root: kiddush, kiddushin – the first part of the wedding ceremony, kaddish, kedushah, an ancient name for a synagogue is a Mikdash Me’at, a small temple. In Judaism, things, people, actions, words, time, and places can all be holy.
We treat this space differently because it is holy. We are not supposed to cut across it to take a short cut to the parking lot, even if the room is empty. We speak in a quieter voice. We don’t put our feet up where the siddurim and chumashim are kept. We wear kippah and tallit in here. We don’t bring in messy foods or toss a ball around. If the ark is open, we don’t leave the room. We enter a little more carefully because if people are saying the Amidah, we want to stop where we are so as not to break their concentration. Maybe this space is holy because of the way we treat it.
It is not easy to enter sacred space. You know how you woke up this morning. We all wake up with life on our minds. We are worrying about work, family, money, health, breakfast, the weather... Is it possible to leave this behind just because we are coming into a chapel? Can we simply walk through the door and enter into an intimate relationship with God, whom we can’t even see or hear and are not sure we believe in? How do we become part of a prayer community when we don’t even know all the people who are here? What do we do with prayers that are in a language we don’t understand? Is it possible to spend two or three hours looking at ourselves honestly through these prayers and dedicating ourselves to trying harder to be the people we hope we can be?
The Mah Tovu prayer at the beginning of the Siddur is the Rabbis’ attempt to help us with this difficult transition from the outside world of the everyday into the world of the sacred where we confront God, community and ourselves. We are supposed to say it just as we are stepping over the threshold.
While it is helpful to have a prayer that acknowledges my struggle with entering and feeling comfortable in holy space, it is not enough for me. I have been going to shul my whole life and I still wrestle with this. It is hard to concentrate on the words of the prayers or the Torah reading even though my Hebrew is quite good; it is hard not to chat with friends; it is hard to think about justice and kindness and mercy; it is hard to sit for so long. I doubt that I come close to understanding who God is or what “holy” means.
The challenge is complicated even more by the fact that I believe sacred space is not limited to the synagogue. There are different levels of kedushah in Judaism. The Ohel Moed was holier than the rest of the Israelite camp. The Kodesh HaKodashim was holier than the Temple’s courtyard. Our beit knesset is holier than the social hall. If we believe that God is everywhere, then maybe we need to think of all places as if they too are holy, maybe not like a shul, but holy nevertheless. If all human beings carry a spark of the Divine in them, then anywhere there are people there must be kedushah.
Our parashah gives us great detail about the clothing and duties of the Cohanim, but the Bible also tells us that all of Israel is a nation of priests. All of us have a sacred obligation to serve God and the world, even if we are not sure what this means or how best to accomplish this goal.
Another kind of biblical leader was the prophet. We have the hakdashah stories – same root - of four of them, the moment when God asked them to be prophets. We know how enthusiastic Moshe was at the Burning Bush: I am not worthy, no one will believe me, I am kvad peh. Jeremiah told God, You know, I’m really too young for this. Ezekiel was silent through his vision of God’s chariot, but the megillah with God’s message tasted sweet. Isaiah, once the fear of seeing God was settled, volunteered, “Hinneni, Here am I; send me.” It is from this chapter in Isaiah that we get “Kadosh, kadosh, Kadosh”, the words of the angels who accompanied God. These four reactions comfort me. These men were prophets, chosen by God, and yet they all reacted differently to the call and were unsure of themselves. Whenever we say the Kedushah and go up on our heels, I try to imagine that God is asking me to be a messenger and I hope that I can find the courage to answer like Isaiah, hinneni.
If the task of recognizing and creating holiness sounds overwhelming, we can at least take comfort in the belief that we are not alone in our search for meaning and kedushah. We have God, an ancient and wise tradition of laws and customs, ancestors who struggled just like us, and an incredible Jewish community to guide and support us as we feel our way.
As Jews, we have many concrete reminders of important abstract values. The kippah reminds us that there is a power greater than ourselves; tzitzit, tefilin and mezuzzah remind us of all the mitzvoth; candles help us usher in holy time; the sukkah reminds us of the importance of Nature and the fragility of life; maror and matzah remind us of the bitterness of slavery and the miracle of redemption; the shofar reminds us that we all make mistakes but have the ability to repent, to forgive and to be forgiven. And there are many, many more.
Maybe our Jewish symbols can also serve to remind us that our homes, our offices, the shopping malls, the entire world all have the potential to be holy space. Maybe every time we see the ner tamid, read a prayer, light a candle or hear the voice of someone we love, we need to let these tangible reminders influence the words we choose, the decisions we make, the actions we take. Maybe our mission is to turn the whole world into a mikdash me’at by behaving everywhere as if we are standing before God.