What Makes a Holy Place?

Sermon Parshat Terumah 5784, Rabbi Sam Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha

In a mitzvah that is at the heart of Jewish religious experience today, in our portion of Terumah this week God commands the Israelites “Asu li mikdash, v’shachanti b’tocham—make for Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among you.”

With this statement, the book of Exodus moves from practical laws to ritual ones.  The plans for the creation of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, first site of national worship, and the directions for building of the ark of the covenant are explained and detailed.  In order to create the new central shrine for prayer, the place which God’s presence will actually inhabit, Moses calls on the people of Israel to donate materials from the best of what they have—what comes to be called a Terumah offering.

And a remarkable thing happens: when the people are asked to donate gifts to build the holy structures needed to worship God they come forward immediately and give much more than is required.  Moses actually has to ask the Israelites to stop bringing so much gold and silver and so many precious fabrics.

This marks the first and only time in history when a temple building campaign brought in more than was asked for or required.  May it happen again sometime soon… right here, perhaps…

In any case, the word for this experience is Terumah, a freewill offering, a gift to God out of the goodness of the heart.  This generous freewill offering is a powerful thing indeed.  For when it is constructed the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, built from such free generosity, immediately is filled with God’s presence. 

When we give freely of ourselves to our temples today—in time, love, care, or funds—we seek to recreate that freewill offering, the full gift of heart and hand of our ancestors in Moses’ time.  And when we succeed in doing so, we, too, bring God’s presence, and love, into our lives. 

Now an important question: what was the true purpose of the original sanctuary decreed in Terumah?

You might think that it was a place for the people of Israel to gather.  The name of it in Hebrew, the Ohel Mo’eid, the Tent of Meeting could lead you to that conclusion.  But that turns out not to be correct.  For the Tabernacle was in fact the place to meet God, not to meet other Israelites, and while individual, normal Israelites could bring their sacrificial offerings to the front part of the tent, they were not permitted to enter it.  That privilege was reserved for the Levi’im, the Levites, and to a greater degree, the Kohanim, the higher level of priests, the descendants of Aaron.  That is, only a special tribe was allowed into the heart of the sanctuary. 

If you are Kohein today—named Cohen or Kagan or Kahane or Cohn or, well, Cohon—you are descended from these priests.  In the time of the Tabernacle and later the Temple that meant you also received a portion of the sacred offerings brought, the holy food offered in the Temple.  Sadly, there is no such specific residual benefit accruing today, although we do get to eat at the same Oneg Shabbat table as all Jews…

Now, along the same lines of limited access, the very holiest section of the sacred tent, the Kodesh Kodashim, the Holy of Holies within the Tabernacle and of course later the Temple, was reserved for the Kohein Gadol, the High Priest who was allowed to enter it just once a year, on Yom Kippur. 

The Tabernacle was for the worship of God, alright, but not for the purpose of gathering together as a community.  The Shechinah, the female divine presence of God, resided within the Tabernacle.  We assembled elsewhere, in front of the building, sometimes, or in front of a mountain or in some other public space.

Now, later, when the permanent Temple was built in Jerusalem, a series of large courtyards were constructed to allow the people to assemble, and perhaps to hold some public events, such as the annual Yom Kippur wait on the Day of Atonement to see if the High Priest emerged unscathed from his entry into the Holy of Holies.  But generally speaking, while the First and Second Temples were busy places, they were not considered to be places of general assembly.

Asu Li mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham, the passage reads: make me a holy place and I, God, will dwell in their midst.  But not, they will come into my holy place in the name of community.

There are many quotations in the Tanakh, the Bible, that refer to people coming to God’s holy mountain—usually understood to be the Temple Mount in Jerusalem—but again, they were to come to make offerings and fulfill their obligations to offer sacrifices to God, not to gather for some sort of communal connection. 

What is particularly interesting is that the need for such communal connection, that is, a place to gather to affirm Jewish community and fulfill the non-ritual functions that are so essential to Jewish identity and, in fact, to Judaism itself developed when the 2nd Temple still stood in Jerusalem. The earliest synagogue in the world, we believe, was located out in the Aegean Ocean, in the Diaspora, on the island of Delos, just off of Mykonos.  It was a humble structure, just a large room really with benches built into the sides of the walls, with some sort of central bimah.  It was most likely a Beit Knesset, a house of assembly—that is also what we call synagogues today—by the way, synagogue is a Greek-origin word—that allowed the Jews living there or visiting there to gather to learn the news that impacted Jews and to meet others and to arrange the affairs of the community.  It was also a Beit Sefer, a place of learning, to allow Jews to study Torah and Jewish law and understand the meaning of our classic texts in their own lives; it was likely also a place to teach Judaism to children, so that they could carry on the tradition.  It may or may not have been a Beit Tefilah, a house of prayer, although eventually, of course, that became a central function of the synagogue.  And it probably functioned as a place for Jews to connect to other Jews for business purposes, and for to offer and receive charity.

In other words, it was what we think of today as a temple, a synagogue, a shul, a congregation.  A place for true Jewish community.  The essential place that guarantees that Judaism can and will flourish in the next generation.  

Now, I don’t believe that Terumah envisioned all of that when it commanded the creation of a Tabernacle.  But I do believe that is what is required today, as it has been for two thousand years, for the perpetuation of a vibrant Judaism now and in the future. 

But I also think that the love that was poured into that first creation of a holy place has a strong place in the life of any meaningful congregation today.

The great Israeli poet Yehudah Amichai wrote beautifully and sensuously on the subject of the synagogue in his final book, Open Closed Open:

I studied love in the sanctuary of my childhood,

I sang, “Come, Sabbath bride” on Friday nights

With a bridegroom’s fever, I practiced longing for the days of the Messiah,

I conducted yearning drills for the days of yore that will not return.

The cantor serenades his love out of the depths,

Kaddish is recited over lovers who stay together,

The male bird dresses up in a blaze of color.

And we dress the rolled-up Torah scrolls in silken petticoats

And gowns of embroidered velvet

Held up by narrow shoulder straps.

And we kiss them as they are passed around the synagogue,

Stroking them as they pass, as they pass,

As we pass.

May we find love of God, and holiness, in our own sanctuaries today.  And may the communities we build in our own temple flourish through that love.