(RNS) — When I was a teenager, I walked to synagogue.
Not all the time. We were not an Orthodox family. We were members of a Reform synagogue that was not in our neighborhood but, rather, four towns — and 8 miles — away.
Still, I walked to synagogue. Once.
I was 16 years old, and I wanted to go to a weeknight youth group meeting at our synagogue. My parents were not available to drive me, so I decided to walk — on the shoulder of the Seaford Oyster Bay Expressway. Cars and trucks sped by, only several feet from my footsteps. I was terrified but undaunted.
When I finally got to synagogue, I entered the dark, empty sanctuary. I opened the doors of the holy ark where the Torah scrolls rested, and I spontaneously uttered a prayer of thanksgiving to God that I had made it there unharmed. It was a profound moment of personal spirituality. In liturgical hindsight, I had learned one of the meanings of what Jews say to mourners: “May the One Who is in all places comfort you, among all those who mourn in Zion and Jerusalem.”
It was not only God that comforted me; it was the place, itself.
I had not thought about that incident in many years, until I read the recent article in The New York Times about the spiritual practice of meditating in an empty church. That adolescent moment had been the last time that I would enter an empty sanctuary for individual meditation. I had somehow believed a sanctuary had no intrinsic holiness, that it only really became a holy place when it had people (at least, a minyan) of people present for worship.
In this belief, I was on solid ground. Yes, Judaism has holy places (the Western Wall, for example, the retaining wall of the Temple Mount, where the ancient temples stood). But Abraham Joshua Heschel had taught that when it comes to holiness in Judaism, holy times are more significant than holy places. The first thing God declares holy is a time — the Sabbath — and not a site.
The same is true with relationships. Relationships — between parents and children, loving partners, the relatively powerful and the relatively powerless, people in community, and learners and a text — all contain levels of sanctity.
Places? Not so much. Yes, I have prayed in spectacular synagogues that have aroused a sense of awe within me. New York’s Temple Emanu-El comes to mind; so does the Great Synagogue in Florence, Italy, which is probably the most beautiful synagogue I have ever visited.
And yet, the worship spaces that have inspired me the most have been the places that are most simple. During the recent High Holy Days, I led services at the progressive congregation in Warsaw, Poland. It is a makeshift worship space, sanctified only by the presence of the Torah scroll in the ark, and the small congregation that prayed there. They — the people, even more than the scroll itself — made that place holy.
And so, for years I had come to believe it was only, or mostly, the people who made places holy — that holiness was entirely portable, as my ancestors discovered when their enemies destroyed the temples in Jerusalem, which led to the growth of the synagogue as an institution — that acts, not location, brought God into presence.
I was right, but I was not entirely right. I have been thinking about the meaning of holy spaces a lot recently, as I have watched in horror the real-life disaster movie unfolding in Los Angeles. Yes: lives, homes, businesses, entire neighborhoods, belongings all lost. But also, at least 12 churches, mosques, synagogues, temples and religious institutions have been lost to the fires.
I have been thinking about those kids who belong to the synagogue in Pasadena that was lost — who mourn the loss of their holy place. An article in JTA describes the service that took place in the wake of that incalculable loss:
For attendee Sadie Zierler, 14, the takeaway was clear: “There’s no more PJTC [Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center] building, but we still have PJTC because it’s in our soul,” she said, adding, “It’s so heartwarming they organized this so quickly.”
Zierler is one of dozens of teens for whom Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, a Conservative synagogue in Pasadena, has been a heart of Jewish life. The 434-family congregation has a biweekly religious school for students up to eighth grade and both an active youth group and an assistant teacher program for teens.
Yes, she and other kids know their synagogue is not only a building, that it exists within their souls. They were perhaps unknowingly echoing their ancestors, who saw the temples in Jerusalem in ruins and who discerned that the holiness was still, and always, within them — or, more precisely, within the sacred mitzvot they would perform. They also knew the sanctity of the Temple had migrated to the table in the Jewish home, which on Shabbatot and holidays was magically transformed into the altar.
Here, I ruminate on a photograph of a home destroyed by fire, wherein the only thing salvageable is the mezuzah.
(Credit: Humans of Judaism Facebook)
But those kids know something else as well. They know people cannot live in the world of abstraction. They know we need our sacred symbols. They know we need sacred places — places where, in the words of the ancient sages, heaven and earth touch; where the boundary between the earthly realm and the divine realm are, to quote Celtic mythology, “thin places.”
But, even and especially with these incalculable losses, the other big truth about holiness keeps shedding its own heat: Holiness resides, especially, in the midst of those people who are helping; donating money and clothing; opening their homes to others, especially strangers. A Hasidic teaching says: “If you are looking for a spark, sift through the ashes.” Sparks ignited this conflagration in the first place; now, it will be the sparks of holiness within the human soul that translate themselves into sacred acts of altruism.
That is where God is, right now.