 Dear Readers, After a 49-year run, this April issue of Sh’ma Now will be our final print edition. Sh’ma has published 746 issues, offering the widest range of voices in conversation about complicated and probing issues. Since 2015, we have published as an insert in the Forward, and with their decision to cease print, we will become a digital-only PDF, hosted on the Forward’s website. If you would like to receive a monthly alert when each new issue is published, please sign up for our monthly eblast. Sh’ma Now is free! You can read individual essays or download and print, free of charge, our Digital PDF, which also includes “Consider and Converse,” a guide to the theme with open & smart questions to further your own explorations.  As I write this letter, I’m feeling quite curious about how we will situate and distinguish Sh’ma in a noisy digital environment. I will continue to communicate with you via eblasts — so stay in touch with us and ask your friends and colleagues to sign up for our mailing list so we can continue to share each new issue of Sh’ma Now.
For the past 21 years, I’ve tried to create a place of sanctuary where we, as Jews, might explicate our own difficult texts, examine our habits and assumptions, explore our rituals and liturgy, and imagine new paths forward. I hope we have contributed to a spiritually and emotionally sustaining space where ideas can flourish.
So, it’s serendipitous that I chose this month’s theme, makom kadosh/sacred space, long before the Forward’s decision to cease its paper edition. The issue delves into questions about what makes a space holy: Is a place sacred because of its location — like Jacob’s ladder — or because of what happens there — a synagogue or mikvah — or because of what we do to make it holy — creating sanctuary for asylum seekers? Like many Sh’ma issues, Makom Kadosh provides existential questions to wrestle with and offers us agency to create an even slightly more perfect world.
Rabbi Amy Kalmanofsky, the Blanche and Romie Shapiro Associate Professor of Bible at the Jewish Theological Seminary, writes that holy places in the Torah “are portals that welcome God’s presence into the world and that allow humans to engage and appeal to God.” For example, Jacob’s ladder or the encounter Moses has with the burning bush that is not consumed. She goes on to problematize this idea, to give humans agency in creating sacred space: “These stories reveal that humans can open the portal to God and sanctify space.” She explains why the paradigm appeals to her: “…it empowers humans and suggests that we can mark and construct holy spaces. Holiness is not necessarily an integral component of a place. Knowing this enables humans to transform any place into sacred space by welcoming the Divine.” Read more.
Those who are familiar with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s stunning and classic book, The Sabbath — about the holiness of time — will find illuminating Rabbi Shai Held’s essay on Heschel’s thinking about the holiness of space. Shai writes, “Heschel’s prioritization of time over space is so profound that even when, in the wake of the 1967 war, he writes a book about the meaning of the Land of Israel for Jews, he titles it Israel: An Echo of Eternity and writes that Israel is “a land where time transcends space, where space is a dimension of time.” Shai then revisits Heschel’s claim in light of God’s covenant with Abraham and the journey to the Land: “Much of the Torah, in fact, is focused on the people’s journey toward the land and God’s revelation of laws to govern their life in that land.” Read more.
Rabbi Susan Silverman, founder of Second Nurture: Every Child Deserves a Family and author of a memoir, Casting Lots: Creating a Family in a Beautiful, Broken World, shares her own deeply personal and compelling story of adoption and ties that story to her activism in general and, particularly, on behalf of women’s prayer at the Kotel. Her essay explores the connection between sacred space and having agency to partner with God. Read more.
Marc Zvi Brettler, a professor of Jewish Studies at Duke University who had an audience with the Pope last week to discuss biblical scripture, demonstrates just how complex the idea of “makom kadosh” is. He examines whether holiness is intrinsic to the Land of Israel or whether it is associated with special divine presence that can be found outside Jerusalem and Israel. While he writes that, generally, “it was crucial to worship God in the Land of Israel.,” he goes on to say, “but for (almost) every biblical tradition, we find a counter-tradition.” Is sacred space a place that is created by holy acts or is it divinely established? Marc makes a point, quoting the prophet Ezekiel, that the divine presence followed the Jewish people into exile in Babylonia. Read more.
In NiSh’ma, our simulated Talmud page, three commentators — asylum seekers and their caregivers — examine a verse from the Book of Exodus where God asks the Israelites to create holy ground that God might live among the desert wanderers. Dafna Lichtman, director of the Garden Library, a community center and library in Tel Aviv meeting the needs of Sudanese and Eritrean refugees, writes that “Sanctuary is therefore found among people. God knows that physical structures are not what sustains holy work; humans make holy work happen.” Her thought — that “place” is made holy by human work — is echoed by Togod Omer, a Sudanese refugee and asylum seeker and Liz Jacobs, a nurse and activist who has sheltered and given sanctuary to Jalilah Nansamba, a 25-year-old Ugandan refugee. Read more.
Our digital PDF of the issue includes “Consider and Converse,” our study guide with prompts for conversations with friends and family, as well as a “call to action” if you’d like more information on organizations working in the social justice field around sacred space.
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B’vracha,  Susan Berrin Sh'ma Now Editor-in-Chief |
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