In this 2010 parsha packet I explore in great depth the concept of holy place, sacred space, as it applied in the Bible through the tabernacle and temple, and as it applies today in the Western Wall. I include ancient and contemporary reflections on what it means to have a sanctuary, and what it meant to the ancients, and how the earthy construct has a celestial blueprint.
More verses are used to describe the tabernacle than any other object in the Bible - fully half the book of Exodus is devoted to it. Why?
Finally, how has the Western Wall today become just the opposite of what its predecessors to be. Why is it now a place of disunity and discrimination? And is it really supposed to be a synagogue?
The Shechina has left the building.
Author of "Embracing Auschwitz" and "Mensch•Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi - Wisdom for Untethered Times." Winner of the Rockower Award, the highest honor in Jewish journalism and 2019 Religion News Association Award for Excellence in Commentary. Musings of a rabbi, journalist, father, husband, poodle-owner, Red Sox fan and self-proclaimed mensch, taken from essays, columns, sermons and thin air. Writes regularly in the New York Jewish Week and Times of Israel.
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