JUDAISM
Christianity
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What places are important for the religion?
by Howard Greenstein
In
Jewish eyes, the Bible emphasizes time much more than space. It
sees the world in the dimension of time. It values generations and
events much more than countries or things. It assigns higher priority
to history than to geography. Appreciating the Bible requires an
awareness that time is at least as important to the meaning of life
as is space. Time contains a significance and sovereignty of its
own.
Curiously
enough, in biblical Hebrew there is no equivalent for the word thing.
In later Hebrew the word davar came to denote “thing,”
because there was no better choice for the purpose, but in the Bible
its meaning most often refers to message, report, tidings, advice,
request, promise decision, sentence, theme, story, saying, utterance,
business, occupation, act, good deed or a host of countless other
meanings, but never does it mean “thing.” The Bible
seems to imply that reality is not a matter of “thing-ness.”
All
holidays and festivals in Judaism celebrate special times, not places
or things. Rosh Hashanah is a reminder of creation
and the beginning of time, and Yom Kippur is a time for repentance.
Even though the major festivals originally were all harvest celebrations,
they all came to commemorate historical events in time—Passover,
the exodus form Egypt, Shavuot, the revelation at Sinai, and Sukkot,
the wandering of Israel in the wilderness. For Judaism these unique
events in time were spiritually far more important than the repetitive
cycles in nature, however necessary they were to sustain physical
life in the world.
Judaism,
therefore, as Abraham Joshua Heschel once noted, “is a religion
of time aiming at the sanctification of time.” No
two moments are ever the same. Every passing hour is uniquely precious,
special and memorable.
To
be sure, the practice of this reverence for special times required
physical places. In earliest times it was probably the Temple at
Jerusalem which served that purpose. Even there, however, the place
was important only because of the occasions it hosted, especially
the plea of the High Priest in the Holy of Holies, the innermost
sanctuary, on the Day of Atonement. The sages taught, however, that
what mattered most was not even the observance of Yom Kippur, but
the day itself, the actual time, which together with human repentance,
atones for all transgressions.
Today
in Israel the most sacred place is probably the Western Wall in
Jerusalem, the only remaining portion of the ancient wall that surrounded
the outermost courtyard of the Temple. Even here, however, what
renders this space most holy is not its physical structure, but
the faith it symbolizes. It is essentially a repository of precious
memories of all the time that has transpired from antiquity to the
present day.
No
synagogue is sacred because of its physical space. Strictly speaking,
there is no such notion in Judaism as “God’s house.”
The location does not matter. Any space can be holy. All that is
required for any place to become a synagogue is the presence of
a minyan, the minimal numerical requirement for a worship
service (ten men in Orthodoxy, men and/or women in Reform and often
in Conservative Judaism).
Rabbinic
texts stipulate a synagogue should be clean and beautiful, but that
condition is more a preference than a necessity. A synagogue may
be little more than a bare room, and no less holy because of its
starkness or austerity. This
flexibility follows from the Jewish teaching that if God is presents
everywhere, people may worship God in any place wherever they may
be.
The
synagogue, however, serves not just as a place of worship. It is
also a “house of study,” a school for learning and teaching
Judaism for both children and adults alike. In addition, it functions
as a “house of the people,” a setting where Jews may
gather together and strengthen each other in matters of Jewish observance
and cultural activities. In short, what sanctifies any space as
a synagogue is a matter of what happens there, not where or what
it is.
In
similar fashion, Judaism attaches special sanctity to the Jewish
home as well. Again, however, what makes that place so special is
not the physical space, but the values and ideals it embodies and
signifies.
In
Heschel’s words, to understand the meaning of holiness in
Judaism, “The sanctity of time came first, the sanctity of
man came second, and the sanctity of space last.” (The
Sabbath, p.10)
Copyright
©2006 Howard Greenstein
Howard
R. Greenstein serves as Rabbi of the Jewish congregation
of Marco Island, Florida. He has previously served congregations
in Florida, Ohio, and Massachusetts. Greenstein has been a Lecturer
at the University of Florida, University of North Florida, and Jacksonville
University. He is the author of Judaism:
An Eternal Covenant (1983) and Turning Point: Zionism
and Reform Judaism (1981).
Excerpts
from What Do Our Neighbors Believe?: Questions and Answers on
Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Howard Greenstein, Kendra
Hotz, and John Kaltner are used by permission from Westminster John
Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky. The book will be available for
purchase in December 2006.
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