The Search for the Sacred: Is Holiness a State of Space, Time or Mind?

By Rabbi David Paskin

Rabbi David Paskin’s The Search for the Sacred is an articulate amplification of the Torah’s command to be holy, to fully BE. How urgently needed this message in today’s increasingly fragile world. How blessed we are to be granted access to this curated collection of wisdom from one of our great teachers!

Menachem Creditor
Rabbi, Congregation Netivot Shalom, Berkeley, CA
Founder, Rabbis Against Gun Violence


The search for the sacred has taken people of faith, and those still navigating the waters of belief, far and wide. We have built majestic cathedrals and meditated quietly as we’ve walked on the sea shores. We have found quiet moments in the hustle and bustle of our busy days and religiously attended communal prayer gatherings. In "The Search for the Sacred," David explores the history of this search and how we can continue to find holiness in our lives today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Aug 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483455204

Book preview

Guys

THE SEARCH FOR THE SACRED

IS HOLINESS A STATE OF SPACE, TIME OR MIND?

RABBI DAVID PASKIN

Copyright © 2016 Rabbi David Paskin.

www.davidpaskin.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5519-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5520-4 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Scripture taken from the Jewish Publication Society Version of the Bible.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 7/27/2016

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

A Note About God

INTRODUCTION THE HEALING POWERS OF HOLINESS

Kadosh

Being in Relationship With God

The Search for the Sacred

The History of Kedusha

The Creation of Holiness

PART ONE

HOLINESS:

A STATE OF SPACE

THE BIBLICAL PERIOD

1 MOUNTAINS, BUSHES, STONES: FINDING GOD IN OUR WORLD

The Patriarchs Encounter God

The Binding of Isaac

Moses and the Burning Bush

Mount Sinai

2 THE TABERNACLE

The Mishkan – A Portable Sinai

The Golden Calf

The Tabernacle is Complete

3 The Temple

From Tabernacle to Temple

The Need for a Permanent Holy Space

A Hint That God and Holiness are Not in Space

Solomon Fulfills the Prophecy

The First and Second Temples

The Herodian Temple

Sacred Space

PART TWO

HOLINESS:

A STATE OF TIME

THE RABBINIC PERIOD

4 A LIFE OF TORAH: STUDY AND MITZVOT

From Temple to Torah

Yochanan Ben Zakkai

The Performance of Mitzvot

Kashrut

5 PRECISE PRAYER

Thrice Daily Prayer and an Additional Service

Z’manim

6 THE HOLY DAYS OF THE YEAR SHABBAT AND HOLIDAYS

Shabbat

The Shalosh Regalim

Yom Kippur

PART THREE

HOLINESS:

A STATE OF MIND

7 CREATING HOLY SPACE

Mountains, Bushes, and Stones Revisited

Mount Horev and Mount Sinai Revisited

The Tabernacle Revisited

The Holy Temple Revisited

Creating Holy Space

Transforming a Room into a Sanctuary

Nature as Sacred Space

8 CREATING HOLY TIME

Making Time for Study

Making Time for Mitzvot

Timely Mitzvot

Prayer

Minyan

Shabbat

Creating Holy Time

9 Holy BE-ing

Kedoshim Tehiu – And You Shall Be Holy

Prophet as Paradigm

In All Ways, Know God

The Guru IS God

One Hundred Blessings Each Day

Awakening the Holy Sparks Within

Prayers of Expression

When Shabbat Begins at 3:58 p.m.

Bringing the Sacred into the Secular

Holidays or Holy Days

Shavuot: Holiness Beyond Space, Holiness Beyond Time

Holiness In-Between

A Crossroads

10 CREATING HOLY SPACE, TIME AND MOMENTS

Shalom Bayit

Affix a Mezuzah to your doorpost

Bring Jewish art and ritual objects into your home

Build a Sukkah

Hang a Jewish calendar on your refrigerator

Create a Friday night Shabbat celebration including candles, wine and challah

Mark the beginning of each Jewish month with a special activity

When you do something new – recite the She’he’cheyanu blessing

Before you eat, recite a blessing

Bring Jewish symbols and rituals into your everyday celebrations

Carve moments out of each day to pray

To BE or not to be

Bibliography

Notes

This work is

dedicated to the memory of my beloved daughter

LIAT CHANINA PASKIN

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who left this world with the kiss of God and on angels wings.

May her memory always be my inspiration to fully BE!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Perhaps the most frustrating part of writing this book has been the realization that I have been deficient in bringing all of the sources and scholarship that exists together in a cohesive form to argue for the paradigms of holiness that have and continue to exist in the Jewish experience. I can no longer open a book, hear a lecture, or study one of our sacred texts without recognizing that I have missed an opportunity to include yet another teaching on the importance of the search for the sacred.

Having said that, I humbly offer the sources and scholarship that I have collected in this work as an introduction to a much larger and deeper discussion on the creation of holiness and the forging of an on-going relationship with the Source of Holiness.

I am deeply indebted to so many for allowing this work to come to fruition. This book began as a Rabbinical Thesis. To all of my professors and rebbes at the Academy for Jewish Religion for opening the world of Torah to me in such a loving and committed way. To Livia Selmanowitz Strauss who helped me frame and re-frame my central question and broaden my scholarly perspective. To Rabbi Andrea Cohen-Keiner who encouraged me to look beyond what was familiar. To my mother, Frayda Glass, whose search for the sacred has been such an inspiration to me.

To my wife, Heather, whose inquisitive mind and depth of BE-ing constantly challenges and encourages me to search deeper. And to my angels, Dalia, Liat (z’l), Ayelet and Naomi, in whose faces I see the face of the Shechinah (God’s Presence), and who remind me that every moment, with full presence and right intention, can be a moment of kedusha.

PREFACE

The search for the sacred has taken people of faith, and those still navigating the waters of belief, far and wide. We have built majestic cathedrals and meditated quietly as we’ve walked on the sea shores. We have found quiet moments in the hustle and bustle of our busy days and religiously attended communal prayer gatherings.

Whether or not our searches have led us to organized religion – the searches, themselves, have given meaning and purpose to our existence. It would, indeed, be much easier to simply live our lives without giving the existence of holiness and the presence of God in the world a second thought. We should allow a forest to be a forest and not bother seeing it as a place where the beauty of God’s sacred creations resides. It would take far less energy to simply let time pass without making a big deal at every turn.

It would be easier, simpler perhaps. But avoiding the search by closing our eyes, ears, hearts and minds to the possibility that there is something much deeper, much richer that has the ability to permeate every aspect of our world leaves our days empty and our memory meaningless. Without the search for the sacred in our lives we are not living we are simply existing.

In the course of this book, I hope to explore the nature, history and significance of kedusha (which, for now, we may understand as holiness) in Judaism as it has been and continues to be understood and appreciated in three distinct, yet related, realms of experience: space, time, and mind. We will begin with an historical survey of the Biblical period in which we will see that the experience of kedusha was most prominent in the realm of physical space.

Moving through to the destruction of the second Temple, we will turn to the Rabbinic period during which our awareness of kedusha shifted from space to time. In both realms we will come to understand that holiness never actually existed intrinsically in space or time. Instead we will see that it was our presence in those spaces and times that allowed them to become holy. Throughout history we have had a vital role in creating and realizing holiness in our world.

But our story does not end with the early centuries of the first millennium. Our search continues today and we are, again, going through an historic transformation in our understanding and appreciation of kedusha. Given that holiness is not bound to space or time and that we, through acts of awareness, ritual and connection, bring sanctity to our experience, it follows that we may sanctify any space and any time. This understanding presents the possibility that the experience of holiness can be both within the prescribed times and spaces identified in Jewish history and beyond them. What determines the presence of holiness is not a specific space or time. It is rather for an individual to realize or become fully aware of holiness as a fact anywhere and at anytime. That realization creates a new state of mind for connection with the Divine.

It is this transition to recognizing and appreciating the role of the person, the community, and the intention that is brought to an experience that has put its signature on the search for the sacred in the 21st century. Many Jews, hungry for connection to the Divine and sanctity in their lives, have turned back toward models of holy space and holy time, while others have seen them as too restrictive and have instead, begun to acknowledge the possibility of creating their own holy space and time.

In acknowledging our ability to sanctify space and time, and by honoring that gift, we may realize, that those who have turned away from the traditional Jewish models of experience, are nonetheless linked to generations of Jews who have come before, and who have traveled the same paths searching for the Divine in their lives. In coming to see holiness as a state of mind we may also rediscover an appreciation for holy space and holy time.

A NOTE ABOUT GOD

Discussing holiness presumes that there is a thing called holiness and that at some point it was introduced into the world. Before we can begin looking into the history of holiness and the search for the sacred then, we must first make clear our assumptions about the One who brings holiness into the world and allows holiness to be searched out.

I come from a rather traditional upbringing from which I understood God as transcendent, all-powerful, and supernatural. Like many before me, I have struggled with these images of God. As I’ve journeyed, God has become for me, in the words of Mordecai Kaplan, the Power that Makes for Salvation. God is the Energy of Life, the Source of Strength, and the One Who is Everything. At the same time, I find in my prayers, a deep desire to connect with a personal God; One I can approach, talk to, relate to, and seek support from.

Throughout this work, I do my best to understand God as God is understood in the time period that I am discussing. Certainly in every period of Jewish existence, God has had many manifestations and innumerable attributes. However, in each period