I spent three weeks in Jerusalem this summer, but before that I was in Paris for seven days so of course my most extensive conversations in Hebrew took place in Paris where I explained where I lived and worked to a representative of the Sokhnut who was in Paris for a series of work meetings, including a lunch meeting with Devora Serrao, who is currently the CEO of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, but who learned with Sara in the Drisha Scholars Circle back in the day.
This rare opportunity to converse in Hebrew provided an opportunity for Sara to observe my unique style of conversational Hebrew and point out two idiosyncrasies which she would term anachronisms. First, I referred to the shuls in our region as the “batei knessiot” – a phrase that appears each week in our Shabbat tefilot but is not standard Israeli Hebrew. Second I explained that I lived in “Washington HaBirah” which is how Washington DC is referenced in ketubot and other halakhic documents to distinguish our city from Washington State, but which Sara found hilarious and the Sokhnut representative was polite enough to ignore.
As you all know, the District of Columbia has a unique status in American law as a federal district, not (yet) a state or part of any state. This comes with concrete disenfranchisement in ways we all know but the intention to create the nation’s capital in a territory that would not be part of any one of the states echoes a dynamic we find in the Torah.
One of the most significant religious innovations of Sefer Devarim is the centralization of worship. The mishkan was a focal point of our life in the desert, but it was, by definition, portable, and the sacred space it delineated changed each time the mishkan moved. In Sefer Devarim we are introduced to the concept of הַמָּק֗וֹם אֲשֶׁר־יִבְחַר֩ ה – the place that God shall choose – which we know to have been Yerushalayim – and which will then become the only location at which sacrifices can be brought.
And the location of the mikdash also represents a sort of “federal district.” The Torah says:
כִּ֣י אִם־בַּמָּק֞וֹם אֲשֶׁר־יִבְחַ֤ר ה֙ בְּאַחַ֣ד שְׁבָטֶ֔יךָ שָׁ֖ם תַּעֲלֶ֣ה עֹלֹתֶ֑יךָ וְשָׁ֣ם תַּעֲשֶׂ֔ה כֹּ֛ל אֲשֶׁ֥ר אָנֹכִ֖י מְצַוֶּֽךָּ׃
“but only in the place that the LORD will choose in one of your tribal territories. There you shall sacrifice your burnt offerings and there you shall observe all that I command you.”
Rashi says:
באחד שבטיך. בְּחֶלְקוֹ שֶׁל בִּנְיָמִין, וּלְמַעְלָה הוּא אוֹמֵר “מִכָּל שִׁבְטֵיכֶם”, הָא כֵיצַד? כְּשֶׁקָּנָה דָּוִד אֶת הַגֹּרֶן מֵאֲרַוְנָה הַיְבוּסִי גָּבָה הַזָּהָב מִכָּל הַשְּׁבָטִים, וּמִכָּל מָקוֹם הַגֹּרֶן בְּחֶלְקוֹ שֶׁל בִּנְיָמִין הָיָה (שם):
“In one of your tribes” means in the territory of Benjamin. But earlier the Torah says, “from all your tribes.” How can both be true? When David purchased Aravnah’s threshing floor, he collected the money from all the tribes. Thus, although the site itself lay in Benjamin’s territory, it belonged to all Israel.
Rashi explains this apparent contradiction of the verses by noting that, technically, the beit hamikash will be located within the territory of Binyamin, even as the location itself was purchased by all the tribes collectively. It therefore is both בְּאַחַ֣ד שְׁבָטֶ֔יךָ and מִכָּל שִׁבְטֵיכֶם.
The Torah is not only teaching us where to worship. It is teaching us something about the nature of holiness itself. Kedushah means that something has been set apart, not because it is less important, but because it is too important to be treated as ordinary.
Of course this effort to centralize our worship in the Beit Hamikdash has not worked out easily in the real world. If you remember Tanakh, the taxation required to build the Beit Hamikdash leads to the disintegration of Solomon’s kingdom and for the remainder of biblical history, there were good kings and there were bad kings, but none of them successfully eliminated the bamot – the private altars that existed throughout Ancient Israel for those who wanted a local backyard alternative to the Beit HaMikdash. The bamot were motivated, perhaps, by laziness and convenience, but also by a desire to worship on our own terms, in a setting we could control.
Although we have no Beit HaMikdash today we do have a halakhic principle of b’rov am hadrat melekh – the glory of the king is demonstrated by the population of the kingdom. This means there is a halakhic preference, for example, for one person reciting kiddush for everyone sharing a meal, and for dozens or hundreds of people davening together at the same time rather than in many smaller gatherings. Here too there is pushback which finds its way into the halakhic literature. One should daven at the largest neighborhood shul, unless you’ll have better kavvanah at a smaller tefilah. One should always daven with the congregation, unless one can davven right at sunrise. The challenge of bamot was not their size but the desire to fashion our religious engagement entirely on our own terms rather than to accommodate the Torah’s call for a centralized and common focus of worship.
But if the site of the Beit HaMikdash is in the territory of each tribe, that means it is not truly in the territory of any tribe and this too is a function of its kedushah. Perhaps this is even definitional to kedushah.
The very first shiur I heard from Rabbi Brovender, over a year before he became my first rosh yeshiva, occurred when he taught my cohort of the Bronfman Youth Fellowships and posed the following question to us: Why had religious Jews, almost universally (at the time) coalesced around a halakhic decision to refrain from ascending Har HaBayit in the decades after June 1967. It was as if the decision of Moshe Dayan to remove the Israeli flag from Har HaBayit had been endorsed by Israel’s religious Jews.
Rabbi Brovender answered that Kedushah, holiness, in Judaism, is expressed by restraint, separation, placing something off limits and aside. Staying away from the site was a way to honor its kedushah. We don’t express sanctity by expanding our access but by showing that it cannot truly be our own. Rabbi Brovender was making, I now realize, the very same point that Rashi makes in our parashah.
In a recently published essay Ro’i Kleitman argues that this theme is much broader and more expansive within Tanakh. Yaakov and Moshe both experience unexpected revelations at sacred spaces they did not anticipate. Yaakov sees a ladder to heaven in Beit El. Moshe encounters God at the burning bush on Horev. For each of them, they come to understand that the place where they stand is not a normal place of this world and they can see and understand things from there that could not have been understood elsewhere. Neither claims the spot; rather they are both given a command to return and make the sacred space into a site of future worship.
The mitzvah of aliyah la’regel – the festival pilgrimage institutionalizes this sort of experience. At the end of our parsha this morning we read:
שָׁל֣וֹשׁ פְּעָמִ֣ים ׀ בַּשָּׁנָ֡ה יֵרָאֶ֨ה כׇל־זְכוּרְךָ֜ אֶת־פְּנֵ֣י ׀ה אֱ-לֹהֶ֗יךָ בַּמָּקוֹם֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר יִבְחָ֔ר בְּחַ֧ג הַמַּצּ֛וֹת וּבְחַ֥ג הַשָּׁבֻע֖וֹת וּבְחַ֣ג הַסֻּכּ֑וֹת וְלֹ֧א יֵרָאֶ֛ה אֶת־פְּנֵ֥י ה רֵיקָֽם׃
Three times a year—on the Feast of Unleavened Bread, on the Feast of Weeks, and on the Feast of Booths—all your males shall appear before the LORD your God in the place that He will choose. They shall not appear before the LORD empty-handed.
Our rabbis understood that there were three mitzvot included in the festival pilgrimage. And each of these three mitzvot reinforce a common theme..
The first mitzvah is יֵרָאֶה֙ which is to be seen, and not to see. We do not come to the beit hamikdash to be independent subjects who scrutinize and evaluate, but to be objects of God’s scrutiny.
The next mitzvah is the mitzvah of simcha – eating a festive meal along with the widow, orphan, and stranger. An encounter with holiness reinforces relinquishing our possessions, expanding the circle of generosity, and forming bonds of solidarity with others.
And the korban Hagigah, brought by each pilgrim further emphasises that an encounter with sanctity entails sacrifice, letting go of something, and reducing my possessions to gain something so much more.
Washington was carved out from the states so that no single state could claim the nation’s capital. The location of the Beit HaMikdash was distinguished from ordinary tribal ownership so that no tribe could claim exclusive possession of a sacred space that ultimately belongs to God.
There is another Hebrew word for something that is set aside and there is a superficial similarity between this category – muktzeh – and the realm of the holy. Muktzeh items have no designated human use or no Shabbat use and so they are set aside as Shabbat begins and we cannot move them or manipulate them over Shabbat. A stone or a stick or a leaf has no human use and so we do not move them on Shabbat. A hammer or a screwdriver has many human uses, but no Shabbat uses and so we similarly abstain from moving them on Shabbat. This resembles the way that items that are holy are out of reach for most people at most times.
But beneath the surface are two different concepts entirely. Muktzeh items are defined by how we use them. Holiness is defined by a purpose beyond ourselves. Muktzeh items don’t really belong to me for the duration of Shabbat. Holy things, and holy places, belong to God.
And that brings us back to the Beit HaMikdash and our own mikdash me’at, our miniature sanctuary. We see holiness when people invest in the community and care about the religious experience of others alongside the experience of themselves. Security and kiddush volunteers who miss the chance to enjoy shul to enable others to do so create a sacred community. Volunteer mikveh attendants who miss dinner with their families to serve others create a sacred community. Families who juggle childcare and professional responsibilities to enable weekday minyan attendance create a sacred community. Veteran worshippers who take the time to show a newcomer the right page in the siddur create a sacred community. As the holiday season approaches, we have a chance to invest in a sacred season for our shul community.
It’s so easy and so common to be resentful of those who show up once a year and sit in “my seat” or who don’t know “my melodies”for the holiday prayers. If we didn’t care so much about our religious lives and if we didn’t feel so invested in the shul itself we wouldn’t be bothered by strangers coming here. But a spirit of generosity and a stance of relinquishing ownership is definitional to the Torah’s vision of the holidays and the Torah’s vision of kedushah.
The hospitality we foster in our homes, and the spirit of generosity with which we welcome guests to our shul, will define the religious tone for the holidays in our community..
So often in human affairs, someone else has to have less for me to have more. But in the realm of the sacred, the more I give, the more I obtain. The less I assert my control, the greater my encounter with holiness.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 