 | What we call spiritual places, holy sites, are more than our consecrated houses of worship or historical touch points. Understood as they truly are, "holy" places can be the most ordinary ... until life, love, experience and memory change them into something more. Those places can transport us in memory and meaning, mind and heart – if we let them. Our story of "double" places that become holy sites begins with this week's Torah portion, and continues today. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Hayyei Sarah 5785 (2024)
Click here for last year's Dvar Torah, "Are You Talking To Me?"
What makes a place holy? What do we mean by "holy" anyway?
In Jewish life, the opposite of holy (קוֹדֵשׁ / kodesh) isn't profane, impure or ungodly. Jewishly speaking, the opposite of holy is ordinary. What we call holy conveys a heightened energy, an importance beyond itself, a palpable pulse of spirit. But Oneness touches everything, so holy isn't just a synonym for spiritual. Holy is the opposite of ordinary.
We all have holy places – places that stand out, where we ourselves aren't ordinary. In every culture worldwide, holy places include houses of worship and also anywhere that suddenly transports us. Our holy places might include a particular beach, the spot where we fell in love, a kitchen table, a hospital, a cemetery – anywhere whose power and meaning breaks through our ordinary reality and routine awareness.
All holy places share a core identity: each is just what it is in each moment – a building, a beach, a park bench – and also something more. Every holy place is two things at once.
Jewish ancestry's first holy place is exactly that. Its story begins in this week's Torah portion, and it teaches us much about our own holy places.
Judaism's first holy place wasn't in Jerusalem but just south in nearby Hebron. Before there was a Jerusalem, a Jewish people or any monotheistic religion in the modern sense, there was מְעָרַת הַמַּכְפֵּלָה / ma'arat haMakhpelah (the Cave of Makhpelah) – now also called Tomb of the Patriarchs and الحرم الإبراهيمي / al-Haram al-Ibrahimi (Sanctuary of Abraham). It's an actual place with archeological proof and loaded Mideast politics (with waves of violence).
We read in Genesis 23 that Sarah died in Kiryat Arba (today part of Hebron). A suddenly widowed Avraham new to the land needed a burial place for Sarah. In the Mideast of the 1700s BCE Bronze Age, caves were choice burial sites, so Avraham went to the local Hittites and bought from them a cave and its adjacent field. The location's name was Makhpelah.
Makhpelah takes its name from the word for "double" (כָּפוּל), because its cave was a "double" cave – either a cave within a cave, or a cave atop a cave (Talmud debates which one). Judaism's first holy place literally was two in one.
This "double" inspired more and more. The cave faces Mamre (Gen. 23:17-19), where in last week's Torah portion Avraham encountered "angelic" visitors – or had fever dream about them. (Click here for last week's blog.) To feed his "visitors," Avraham went to take a young goat from his herd, which in midrash ran from him into that same cave. Avraham followed it into the "double" cave, which became a portal to eternity – literally. Suddenly he smelled Gan Eden (the Garden of Eternity) and met Adam and Eve. The encounter foretold Makhpelah becoming our ancestry's first holy place, monotheism's first consecrated burial place, a portal of transcendent meaning and experience.
And so it was. At Makhpelah were buried Sarah and Avraham, Rivkah and Yitzhak, Leah and Ya'akov – Jewish ancestry's firsts. The place became venerated, a pilgrimage site century after century and culture after culture. Some 1,700 years later, Rome's Herod built it up into a great temple, his architectural model for what would become הַר הַבַּיִת (Har HaBayit) a.k.a. Temple Mount or الحرم الشريف (Haram al-Sharif). Atop Makhpelah, Christianity built a great cathedral. Islam followed and built there a great mosque.
Today Makhpelah is one of the very few places where Muslims and Jews pay homage and pray side by side – Muslims on one side, Jews on the other. The "double" cave that became a portal to Eden, a place of eternity, a magnet for meaning, became also a political fault line.
All of these make Makhpelah "holy" – the opposite of ordinary. Our own "holy" places might not be political fault lines, but they're as much "double" places as the original "double" place at Makhpelah. Our holy places are holy because we recall what happened there and that time suddenly becomes now and transports us. Or we associate the place with spiritual activity, Big Mind, Big Meaning or Best Self – and in that place we ourselves become (or aspire to become) more.
The secret is to let our holy places be holy places – to let them be two things at once, to let them transport us where they will. Little of this can make sense in our intellectual left-brain rational thought, yet experience tells us how very real our "double" places are.
See where yours take you, and let them. Life will never be ordinary again.
Hayyei Sarah 5785 (2024)
Click here for last year's Dvar Torah, "Are You Talking To Me?"
What makes a place holy? What do we mean by "holy" anyway?
In Jewish life, the opposite of holy (קוֹדֵשׁ / kodesh) isn't profane, impure or ungodly. Jewishly speaking, the opposite of holy is ordinary. What we call holy conveys a heightened energy, an importance beyond itself, a palpable pulse of spirit. But Oneness touches everything, so holy isn't just a synonym for spiritual. Holy is the opposite of ordinary.
We all have holy places – places that stand out, where we ourselves aren't ordinary. In every culture worldwide, holy places include houses of worship and also anywhere that suddenly transports us. Our holy places might include a particular beach, the spot where we fell in love, a kitchen table, a hospital, a cemetery – anywhere whose power and meaning breaks through our ordinary reality and routine awareness.
All holy places share a core identity: each is just what it is in each moment – a building, a beach, a park bench – and also something more. Every holy place is two things at once.
Jewish ancestry's first holy place is exactly that. Its story begins in this week's Torah portion, and it teaches us much about our own holy places.
Judaism's first holy place wasn't in Jerusalem but just south in nearby Hebron. Before there was a Jerusalem, a Jewish people or any monotheistic religion in the modern sense, there was מְעָרַת הַמַּכְפֵּלָה / ma'arat haMakhpelah (the Cave of Makhpelah) – now also called Tomb of the Patriarchs and الحرم الإبراهيمي / al-Haram al-Ibrahimi (Sanctuary of Abraham). It's an actual place with archeological proof and loaded Mideast politics (with waves of violence).
We read in Genesis 23 that Sarah died in Kiryat Arba (today part of Hebron). A suddenly widowed Avraham new to the land needed a burial place for Sarah. In the Mideast of the 1700s BCE Bronze Age, caves were choice burial sites, so Avraham went to the local Hittites and bought from them a cave and its adjacent field. The location's name was Makhpelah.
Makhpelah takes its name from the word for "double" (כָּפוּל), because its cave was a "double" cave – either a cave within a cave, or a cave atop a cave (Talmud debates which one). Judaism's first holy place literally was two in one.
This "double" inspired more and more. The cave faces Mamre (Gen. 23:17-19), where in last week's Torah portion Avraham encountered "angelic" visitors – or had fever dream about them. (Click here for last week's blog.) To feed his "visitors," Avraham went to take a young goat from his herd, which in midrash ran from him into that same cave. Avraham followed it into the "double" cave, which became a portal to eternity – literally. Suddenly he smelled Gan Eden (the Garden of Eternity) and met Adam and Eve. The encounter foretold Makhpelah becoming our ancestry's first holy place, monotheism's first consecrated burial place, a portal of transcendent meaning and experience.
And so it was. At Makhpelah were buried Sarah and Avraham, Rivkah and Yitzhak, Leah and Ya'akov – Jewish ancestry's firsts. The place became venerated, a pilgrimage site century after century and culture after culture. Some 1,700 years later, Rome's Herod built it up into a great temple, his architectural model for what would become הַר הַבַּיִת (Har HaBayit) a.k.a. Temple Mount or الحرم الشريف (Haram al-Sharif). Atop Makhpelah, Christianity built a great cathedral. Islam followed and built there a great mosque.
Today Makhpelah is one of the very few places where Muslims and Jews pay homage and pray side by side – Muslims on one side, Jews on the other. The "double" cave that became a portal to Eden, a place of eternity, a magnet for meaning, became also a political fault line.
All of these make Makhpelah "holy" – the opposite of ordinary. Our own "holy" places might not be political fault lines, but they're as much "double" places as the original "double" place at Makhpelah. Our holy places are holy because we recall what happened there and that time suddenly becomes now and transports us. Or we associate the place with spiritual activity, Big Mind, Big Meaning or Best Self – and in that place we ourselves become (or aspire to become) more.
The secret is to let our holy places be holy places – to let them be two things at once, to let them transport us where they will. Little of this can make sense in our intellectual left-brain rational thought, yet experience tells us how very real our "double" places are.
See where yours take you, and let them. Life will never be ordinary again.
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