BaMakom HaZeh

[The following was a sermon given at Temple Beth Am in Monessen, PA and adapted from a sermon given at Shir Tikva in Winchester, MA. The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the congregation I am privileged to serve.]

I used to go out to the promenade across the valley from the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem just before sunset, my favorite time in Jerusalem, Yerushalaim shel zahav time—Jerusalem-of-gold time. The time when the slanted rays of the sun hit the sand-colored stones and the entire city shines gold.

Anyone who’s been to Jerusalem knows that it’s just not like anywhere else.
In the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, the narrow alleyways criss-cross sudden courtyards, winding up and down stairs, built upon layers and layers of stones attesting to the special place this hilltop city has held in Jewish history for centuries upon centuries. Suddenly, the city opens up and you’re standing at the Western Wall plaza. Thousands of people stuff notes into the crevices between the stones, carved and set in place during the time of King Herod. But around the corner, at the Southern Wall—that’s the spot I loved best.

The Southern Wall plaza contains a set of stairs leading to arches long since filled in with massive stone blocks. Pilgrims to the ancient Temple climbed these stairs and entered those arches to make sacrifices to God. Before them stood what must have been the largest human-built structure they had ever seen: the Temple of Solomon, and within it, the Holy of Holies. Unlike other sanctuaries of the Ancient Near East, the Temple in Jerusalem contained no statue. Instead, it held the Ark of the Covenant and the tablets on which the finger of God wrote the commandments.

It also held something else: a stone.

Jewish tradition says that the Holy of Holies stood upon the precise peak of Mount Moriah, the very spot where Abraham willingly offered his son Isaac as proof of his loyalty to God. But Abraham wasn’t the only Jewish patriarch to come into contact with that stone. The peak of Mount Moriah served not only as an altar but as a pillow. According to the rabbis, when Jacob camps out in the wilderness, the stone on which he rests his head is indeed the very same stone Abraham used for an altar.

From the Torah: Jacob leaves home to escape his brother Esau’s anger about the stolen birthright. Along his route, Jacob stops to rest, taking a stone for a pillow. In his sleep, “He had a dream; a stairway was set on the ground and its top reached the sky, and angels of God were ascending and descending on it” (28:12).

But Jacob’s experience on that night involved not only a vision of angels and a stairway and a realm beyond human experience.

As Jacob lay on the hard ground, his head upon the stone, he experienced a physical presence. “[Hinei ADONAI] And here is the Eternal [nitzav alaiv] standing beside him.” The God of his father Isaac and of his grandfather Abraham stood, a physical act, with Jacob, promising to give land, prosperity, and blessing to his descendants.

Jacob’s nearness to God motivates and changes him. When he wakes, he wonders aloud at his blindness to the significance of this place:

[Vayikatz Yaakov mishnato vayomer:] And Jacob awoke from his sleep and said: [“Achein! Yeish ADONAI bamakom hazeh v’anochi lo yadati”] “Aha! The Eternal was in this place and I did not know it!” [vayirah vayomar:] and he was shaken/awed/afraid, and he said: [“Mah-nora hamakom hazeh! ] “How awesome is this place! [ein zeh ki im beit elohim v’zeh sha’ar hashamayim”] This is none other than a house of God, and that is the gateway of heaven.” (28:16-18)


Jacob immediately erects a pillar and makes a vow to honor Adonai as his God.

While we tend to think of the presence of God as spiritual, we are strongly encouraged in this Torah portion to imagine the presence of God as physical—as upon us, aleinu. Jacob experienced the presence of God as an overwhelming, physical, bodily sensation. There was the Eternal in this place, here, at that very moment.

We might lament that we have no such opportunity. God simply doesn’t do that anymore. Or we might think, perhaps God appears in Jerusalem, at the peak of Mount Moriah, but not in the Monongahela Valley!

Jacob’s reply can guide us: [“Achein! Yeish ADONAI bamakom hazeh] “Aha! There was the Eternal in this place [v’anochi lo yadati] and I did not know it!” (28:16). In Hebrew, personal pronouns are not necessary; verbs tell us all we need to know about both actor and action. Here, however, we read “v’anochi”—and I—“lo yadati”—I did not know. “There was the Eternal in this place and I, I did not know.”

In other words, how could I not have known? How could I not have seen? How could I not have felt? What was it about me that prevented me from recognizing the presence of God bamakom hazeh, in this place?

Torah commentators pore over the exact, earthly location of Jacob’s dream site. Rashi infers from this passage a remarkable reshaping of the physical world that brings Jacob close to important sites in the history of the covenant between God and Israel: “God folded the entire Land of Israel beneath [Jacob]” (Genesis Rabbah). Jacob’s pillow represents layer upon layer of sacred spots: Hamakom hazeh, “this place,” is at once the site of Abraham’s prayer and worship; Mt. Moriah, the place of the near-sacrifice of Isaac; and the field where Isaac prayed after his ordeal. Rashi argues that “this place” is extraordinary, linked to the Jewish past and deeply significant to the covenant between God and Israel.

We can wait for a dream of our own—one in which we are seamlessly folded into the Jewish past—but this is not the only way our Torah portion imagines the potential for humans to encounter the Divine.

Perhaps the key is that God was indeed bamakom hazeh, in this place—not at the top of the stairway, not behind the gate of heaven, but standing over Jacob, who slept on the hard ground with a rock for a pillow. What if that rock was “just” a rock?

Standing on the stairs by the Southern Wall in Jerusalem, it’s all too easy to think, “Achein! ” The rise is steep; you are truly climbing, the closed arches before you, behind you, the rocky hills of Jerusalem and beyond, the expanse of the desert and the looming mountains of Morav. Awesome.

In arguing that God provided a very special pillow for Jacob, the rabbis imply that certain places offer unique access to the divine.

When we pray in this sanctuary, do we have a special access to God? Do you feel differently in this room than you do in your living room? I do. But I am not sure that what is different about this place is the presence of the sefer Torah or the smooth stone surrounding the ark or the lovingly-tended and beautiful mantles covering the scrools. I am not sure it is the physical structure, this building with its ritual objects and works of art, its Talmud volumes and schooldesks. Rather, what makes this place sacred, what makes this place a Beit Elohim is you, is us, is the community we form each month when we gather to hear the words of our tradition, the community that continues to nurture one another in very real ways throughout the year, throughout the lives of each of its members. What makes this space sacred are the memories of b’nei mitzvah celebrated on this bima, offers of food and sympathy carried to a mourner’s house, the names of this community’s ancestors displayed on the memorial plaques, holiday dinners shared down in the social hall, lively arguments at Torah study. This Beth Am, a house of the people, is indeed a Beit Elohim, a House of God. Like Jacob’s dream-place, like hamakom hazeh, this place offers us a vision of a stairway to the divine.

Jerusalem is special. And being in this sanctuary helps many of us to differently focus our attention toward Jewish ideals, our own Jewish memories, and the Divine. But we learn in this week’s Torah portion that we can connect to our Jewish tradition in any and every place. God manifested in an ordinary place, a physical spot in the real, tangible world. The fact that Jacob, upon waking, builds not a temple or a palace but a pillar, a marker for the next passerby, suggests not that bamakom hazeh is the lone, particular, special dwelling-place of the God of our ancestors, but that we, if we are open to it, can experience the presence of God in the places where we find ourselves.

So, despite the rabbis’ confidence that Jacob’s makom hazeh marks an actual location in Israel, we need not conclude that we can find God in only a finite number of places. Rather, our tradition tells us that God loves the Jewish people enough to transform any place—even a bed on the ground and a stone pillow—into a space in which we experience God’s nearness. If we are open to the surprise (Achein! ), we too might find God bamakom hazeh, in this place. As Lawrence Kushner writes, “There is another world, right here within this one, whenever we pay attention” (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2006: 25). We can open our hearts and minds to the surprise that, unbeknownst to us, God has been bamakom hazeh, in this place, all along.

Turning and Returning

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, doesn’t come like a bolt out of the blue. The entire preceding month offers opportunities—personal and communal, formal and impromptu—for teshuva, often translated as “repentance” and related to the word “return.” Some Jews pray for forgiveness in the synagogue, pouring out emotion, crying, throwing up their hands. Some ask others for forgiveness, initiating honest conversations about wrongdoings of the past year. Yom Kippur itself, the day of judgement, begins with Kol Nidre, the eve of Yom Kippur, and ends at Neila, the closing of the gates, when Jews ask God to forgive us as an entire community, acknowledging our own small existence relative to God’s power.

In Brooklyn, I would walk to shul on Kol Nidre among the diversity of people in my neighborhood. Some, observing the custom of not wearing leather on Yom Kippur, I could spot straightaway as Jews walking to synagogue—dressed in fancy clothing but donning flip-flops, for example. Most were on their way to the park if it were a warm night, or headed to dinner, or coming home from work, relieved. In Jerusalem, I walked out of my apartment building to find dozens of people in the street, many wearing either the white kittel (a garment worn most by Orthodox men, resembling the garment that will cover them in death and burial) or wearing white clothing more generally—both serving as reminders of the unique and awesome significance of this day, the day on which God decides our ultimate fate. It seemed like everyone was headed to the same place, for the same purpose. This turning felt nearly automatic, not even a conscious choice.

Walking to shul on streets empty of cars, with traffic lights taking a rest for the entire day, in a community and a city where most of the other people on the streets were also headed to pray, I started to ask myself about turns and returns. What happens next year, when the walk to shul on Kol Nidre again becomes a choice I make? If my decision to pray on Kol Nidre, to fast and spend the entire day in shul on Yom Kippur, is challenged, how will I respond? What kind of turns will I take?

In many ways—and these ways are complicated by the fact that I am a Reform convert, a woman, and a lesbian—being a Jew and not living a Jewish life in Israel would be impossible. On Shabbat in Jerusalem, buses stop running and businesses shut down. There is practically a shul on every corner and people walk around the city dressed in their finest, celebrating and gathering with friends. I have a community of people to share Shabbat dinner with every week. The school year and the work year here run according to the Jewish calendar. The entire country, in one way or another, observes Yom Kippur (whether in synagogue or not). On Kol Nidre, after services were over, I walked with my friends to a nearby neighborhood. We must have seen hundreds of others dressed in white, walking, in the middle of the street, past closed shops and restaurants.

Teshuva for me begins this year and carries into the next. I hope that I can turn my own Jewish practice back in Brooklyn a bit towards Jerusalem. Just as we face East, face Jerusalem, face the Temple, face the Holy of Holies when we pray, I want to turn my “home” observance toward this place, where Judaism infuses nearly every aspect of life.

Peace and Wholeness in Yerushalayim

The title of this post likely implies more insight than you are about to encounter, but two things have happened this past week that have led me to write this: (1) a friend requested that I talk more about my daily experiences and (2) I saw two shows that made me think differently about living in Jerusalem. (Warning: this post contains information on the new Batman movie, so if you haven’t seen it, wait till later to read!)

Many of you know that on Tuesday, July 22, a man driving a tractor purposely reeled into oncoming traffic. Several people were injured; thankfully no one was killed. All of the students in my HUC class are physically safe, though a few were near the location of the incident. We are all taking care of one another and being cautious.

I’m not telling you this to alarm you (let me stress: I am doing absolutely fine, and the city nearly immediately returned to all its normal functions) but to give a sense of what it is like to live in a place that does face frequent violence and constant tension between extreme factions, each of which believes the other has no right to exist.

So in the midst of “Arab” versus “Jew,” I did what any sane person would do: I went to see some drama.

Last Saturday, after Shabbat ended, several friends and I walked over to Beit Shmuel, a center for Progressive Judaism (Reform movement worldwide) here in Ir HaKodesh, the holy city. Sitting comfortably in our cushy seats in a perfectly air-conditioned theater, we laughed when the curtain rose and five drag queens posed in outlandish outfits. Calling themselves “Peot Kedushot”—“Holy Wigs” or “Holy Curls”—these gay-identified men of various ages lip-synched and sang a range of songs, from Israeli pop to American musical.

It was in many ways a typical drag show: much posing, lots of makeup, gorgeous legs, and catty jokes (at least, I think they were catty jokes: the entire show was in Hebrew). But in other ways this show was nothing but typical: just a few roads away from the walls of the Old City, Peot Kedushot challenged many laws, rules, and expectations in this city driven by a conservative,even ultra-orthodox, interpretation of Jewish law (which includes injunctions against both cross-dressing and homosexuality). Graffiti around the city announces “Homosexuals very dangerous for children” and “Homo=goy” (that is, non-Jew). Enter Peot Kedushot. In a medley of songs from Sister Act, a nun, an Orthodox Jewish woman, and an observant Muslim woman sang praises to their respective gods and viewed the others’ piety with skepticism and sometimes anger. In an aside, one performer informed the audience that there are three religions in Jerusalem: Yahadut, Islam, v’piguya—Judaism, Islam, and terror attack. But it was the finale that left us in awe, amazement, and admiration.

A spotlight shines on one performer. “She” removes her wig; a bald head reminds us that this person with glittery red lips and full breasts is a man. Another performer enters and the spotlight moves to her; she is wearing a leotard and tights, his smooth body hiding his gender. A third performer: fishnet stockings, a half-leotard, bare chest, smeared make-up. He was a glamorous woman, and he is a middle-aged man. A fourth: tight shorts and a bra that is soon removed, little makeup. He no longer looks like a ballerina, though his skills en pointe were certainly impressive. The final performer, perhapsthe most “feminine” of the group, the one who achieved the most “realness”: boxer-briefs, bare legs and feet, no makeup whatsoever. A cute boy—young and fresh-faced. They stand in a row at the edge of the stage, defiant faces, a fire in their eyes. “I am still a man,” they sing.

A few nights later, I joined more than half of my classmates at Jerusalem’s largest shopping mall to see the new Batman movie. For the most part, I found it entertaining in that easy, action-movie way: just sit back and watch the good guys clobber the bad guys. But I was also watching in Jerusalem, and sitting with my classmates, some of whom are having a particularly hard time adjusting to life in a city that is, underneath its resilience, on edge. In one crucial scene, two ferries –assumed safe—carry people out of Gotham City, where the Joker has threatened death and destruction. Then the Joker’s voice announces that each boat is rigged with explosives. One ferry, loaded with criminals from Gotham’s prison, has the detonator for the other ferry, loaded with innocent men, women, and children—and vice versa. At midnight, the Joker says, he will blow up both ferries, no matter what. But if the people on one ferry decide to detonate the other, the Joker will let the passengers on the first ferry live. It’s a classic “prisoner’s dilemma.” The ferries cannot communicate with one another, and they have to ask themselves: What will the others do? Shall we all die together, or do we save ourselves?

Several arguments are put forth, and the civilian ferry puts it to a vote, coming down in favor of blowing up the prisoners. On the prisoners’ boat, a riot is about to erupt. In the end, one of the civilians holds the detonator in his hand but ultimately cannot bring himself to press the button. A tough criminal approaches a police officer on the other ferry and quietly demands the detonator so that he can “do what should have been done” already. The audience expects him, of course, to blow up the civilians. Instead, he throws the detonator out into the water.

It wasn’t the dilemma itself that made me think about Jerusalem and terror attacks and heated conflicts. After the criminal tosses out the detonator, clearly making the moral and ethical choice, a few audience members at the Jerusalem mall clapped. I don’t know who they were or whether they were politically conservative or liberal, but these residents of a city under seige cheered for doing the right thing.

Jerusalem is a confusing place, maddening even. It is beautiful and familiar and strange and ugly. There is homophobia and there is a gay community center. There are ultra-orthodox communities who angrily force outsiders to leave and there are welcoming progressive Jewish synagogues. My prayer for this year is that I will get to know Jerusalem in all its layers and complexities, beneath its wigs and costumes, to come to know the true character of its people: people who long for wholeness and for peace.

Shehecheyanu

I’m not a mystical person, but I definitely expected my entrance into Jerusalem to be moving. If I cry watching commercials, shouldn’t I cry as I enter one of the world’s most ancient—and yet still vibrant—cities, the holiest place of several major world religions, including the religion of my childhood and the religion not only of my present and future but of my future life’s work and calling?

We got off the plane in Tel Aviv at 5:30 in the morning. No one sang when the plane landed. Waiting in line to pass through customs, pushing our way into a shared-ride taxi to Jerusalem, and chatting with the young Orthodox woman next to me (37 years old, 11 children, and a very narrow idea of how one can, must, be Jewish) didn’t exactly stir my soul.

And then it was several days of climate problems: dehydration, loss of appetite, resulting hunger. I felt uncomfortable and out of place. My physical sensations led me to think I shouldn’t be here, I don’t belong, I am not ready for this.

I drank more bottles of water than I can count. I started to feel better. I put up some familiar objects in my new bedroom. I ate. I explored the shuk (outdoor market) in the safety of a group of students and our very able interns. Things started to look up. Shabbat services at Hebrew Union College and an engaging lecture by Dean Rabbi Michael Marmer and President Rabbi David Ellenson reminded me why I am here, and the amazing privilege I have to be studying here, with these people and at this instution.

But today was the first day I felt moved to really pray in thanksgiving and awe—and I mean that in the literal sense of the word—at being here, at this time, in this place: Jerusalem, 2008, nearly a year from my (adult) bat mitzvah and just four years after taking the Torah scroll in my arms and receiving my Hebrew name.

I stood at the Western Wall, surrounded by women, divided from the men by a barrier (mechitza) I thought would dominate my thoughts and interrupt my experience. The plaza is broad and expansive, with smooth light stones. The sun beat down on us, still hot at 4:30 in the afternoon. A few bookshelves lined with prayerbooks stood at the edges; some women sat in chairs, praying quietly near the wall or waiting for friends and family.

Many women approached the wall with fervor, davening (praying) with the traditional swaying motion or pressing their foreheads to the warm stones. Others backed away from the wall when they were finished, refusing to turn their faces on the Presence, the manifestation of God that some believe exists here.

As I approached the pocked stones, I was not overcome by a wave of mystical emotion. I didn’t have any visions. I’m not sure I even felt what these other women sensed as the Presence.

But I was stirred.

Here, between stones rubbed by countless hands for thousands of years, the sincerest prayers were deposited, written on scraps of paper, folded or rolled and tucked carefully into the cracks between the stones. This place marks an interface between the human and the Divine. Some of the prayers may be mundane, but whatever their content, I saw them today as the hopefullness of humans, the potential for religion to act not as a mechitza but as a way to relate: to one another and to the divine. The wall motivates a literal and a spiritual reaching out, as pilgrims hold out their arms to the stones, contemplate their own lives and histories, or pray in the words of their traditions.

I put my hands to the stones, thinking about all the others who had been here before me, praying in thanksgiving or in anguish, making supplications or simply standing in a crucial site in history. I forgot about the mechitza and instead found myself in tears: not fearful tears or sad tears or homesick tears, but tears of real gratitude, in the words of the traditional blessing, for having been enlivened, sustained, and enabled to reach this very moment.

I stood in front of the holiest earthly site for the Jewish people as one individual among many, not standing out, yet I brought with me my entire history. In this place, all prayers are accepted into the cracks between the stones, including the prayers of a grateful convert/future rabbi.