Face to Face

Whenever we enter a sanctuary, all the more so this week as we read the construction details of ancient Israel’s portable desert sanctuary, the Mishkan, we ask ourselves what makes a place holy. Some sanctuaries, ours included – like the one in our Torah reading – overflow with aesthetic beauty. The stained-glass windows, the grand architecture, the Moorish style – dedicated in 1927 and in constant need of upkeep, refurbishment, and repair – entering this space, and one cannot help but be inspired. So too the soaring music or, on occasion, an uplifting sermon. All prompt us to consider the world not as it is, but as it ought to be, ourselves not as the people we are, but as the people we aspire to be. But regardless of whether a sanctuary is small or large, modest or grand, a sanctuary is also made holy by virtue of being a repository for a sacred tradition: the prayers we recite, the Torah we read, the festivals we observe, young people being called up to the Torah to take their place as links in an unbroken chain of transmission. We enter a sanctuary in order to be connected to something that began long before our arrival in this world and that will, please God, extend long after our tenure here on earth. You may have grown up in this sanctuary, you may have grown up in a different one, you may have not grown up in one at all, but the effect of entering is one and the same. To feel oneself to be in the presence of tradition, history, and most of all, God. As the Torah reading states: V’asu li mikdash v’shakhanti b’tokham, Make for me a sanctuary, so that I [God] may dwell among them.” As a teacher of mine once taught, the project of Judaism – but really any religion – is to create a world where God would want to dwell.

Aesthetic beauty, tradition, God – our sense of holiness arises from many sources, as diverse as the people who enter sanctuaries. And while different moments in life draw us to holiness in different ways, for me, and perhaps for you, the deepest and most constant source of holiness comes by way of people, or more precisely, the connections we forge one person to another. The people who we are here with today, the people I can recall from sanctuaries past, and the people whom I hope will one day populate the pews where we presently sit.

Not too long ago, I returned to my hometown of Los Angeles and went to the synagogue of my youth. The clergy are different, the melodies are different, even the pews have changed. But none of that mattered. The space was sacred because I remembered crawling under my father’s tallis as a child. I remembered my mother telling me and my brothers to open up our prayer books because that is how a Jew should behave in synagogue. I remembered Mr. Gendon, the grandfatherly figure who always sat next to my family, slipping me a peppermint candy whenever the rabbi began his sermon. Be it the sanctuary of my youth or any of the communities of which I have been a part, it is in the connections between the people in the pews, not the pews themselves, where holiness is found. God is not meant to be found merely in the vertical axis – the one connecting heaven and earth, but in the horizontal one as well – the holy space connecting one person to another.

This sensibility, this sensitivity to the sanctity that comes by way of two souls in dialogue, face to face, one with one another, is first stated, quietly and mystically, in our Torah reading itself. It is easy to gloss over the details of Israel’s building project: an ark of acacia wood, two and half cubits long, a cubit and half wide, a cubit and a half high. The moldings, the metals, the materials – hardly the most stirring stuff to a liberal arts major like myself. But then come three key verses, easy enough to overlook. A commandment to fashion two cherubs of gold, angelic figures with wings extended wide, standing at the entrance of the Ark of the Covenant. In and of themselves, the two cherubs are fascinating. The only physical representations of living beings in the tabernacle, they are a striking exception to the Torah’s strong opposition to graven images. But what fascinated the rabbis most was not that the cherubs existed or even what they looked like – human, angel, or otherwise – but how they were positioned in relation to each other: face to face. It is between the two, the text states, that God’s voice emerged. Not from the ark itself, not from one cherub or the other, but from the space in between, the encounter between the two. That is where the divine presence was most immediate. Ancient, medieval, and modern commentaries alike are captivated by this evocative image. Not in one or the other, but in their interaction, in the dialogue between them. Not just the vertical axis, but the horizontal one, that is where God and godliness, can be found.

And from the sanctuary of old to the sanctuary of today, Judaism has always held that it is in the space between souls, in the dialogue between two people, that holiness is to be found. When the Temple stood in Jerusalem, offerings were made to God, of course, but the Talmud notes that pilgrims also followed a careful choreography of greeting one another, acknowledging each other's humanity – seeing God in each other’s faces, not just in heaven. Even in exile, without a Temple or a land in which to pray, Jews understood that God could still be accessed through the act of reaching out to the soul of another. This idea was given its most profound expression in Lurianic Kabbalah, developed by the sixteenth-century mystic Isaac Luria in the wake of the Spanish Expulsion. Luria taught that, even in exile, holiness could be found in gathering the scattered divine sparks – souls separated by dispersion – and bringing them close once more. As long as Jews have been Jews, inside our sanctuaries and beyond, we have understood that holiness is best found in what Martin Buber, among others, called an encounter. It is in the face-to-face dialogue, in the sacred space between souls, that God's presence is revealed.

And while this insight may be as old as it is self-evident, my fear is that this ancient truth of our tradition has been lost in the toxic discourse of our present day. If the working premise of our faith is a belief that encounter is an authentic means to generate and sustain sacred community, then it is a premise that far too many of us presently neglect. At a time when the Jewish people face no shortage of enemies from without, we seem to have no trouble making enemies of ourselves from within, forgetting how sacred community is created and maintained.

These are complicated times, with real and deeply felt differences about what is in the best interest of our people, both in Israel and in the United States. Opportunities for respectful dialogue abound. None of us, as the saying goes, is as smart as all of us. No one has a monopoly on truth. And yet, perhaps because the stakes feel so high, perhaps because of the trauma we have endured or the vulnerability we continue to feel is so acute, rather than seeking wisdom wherever it may be found, we retreat inward, cling to our ideological certainties and attack those who dare to think differently. Our opinions harden into orthodoxies, and our critics are branded heretics. Debate is abandoned for denunciation; discussion, for dismissal. Instead of dignifying the right of another to differ, instead of engaging with curiosity and humility, we label those with whom we disagree as treacherous, treasonous, and traitorous. Why engage with an opposing view when it is so much easier simply to assign ill intent and retreat into the comfort of our own certainty?

It would be enough just to call out the intellectual laziness, the ad hominem attacks, or the cowardly name-calling of our time, but what makes it all the more pernicious is that these assaults on people’s character are happening in a most public way – not in private conversations or earnest debate, but in social media posts, group emails, and public denunciations designed not to engage, but to vilify, humiliate, and prompt self-censorship. Folks who would rather slander another with an Instagram post than pick up the phone or sit down for a respectful conversation. Folks who would rather work their phone tree to sully someone’s good name than take a walk in the park alongside someone with whom they disagree. Folks who would rather forward private emails, screenshot texts, or circulate smear campaigns than engage in the hard, necessary work of dialogue and understanding.

I know this is the age in which we live. We tell ourselves that we are not to blame. The stakes are high; ours is a polarizing time and the toxic vitriol being spewed is not unique to the Jewish people. This is the coarse discourse of the world in which we live – be it our news cycle, our politicians, or our social media algorithms. But really? Is this the best we can do? Is this what it means to be a light unto the nations? To publicly attack another Jew for having a view different than our own? Earlier this week, I heard Douglas Murray make an observation to the effect that for ten percent of the world, Israel can do no right; for ten percent, Israel can do no wrong; and the other eighty percent of the world doesn’t actually care and would rather just watch the football game. And yet, for whatever reason, rather than focusing on shaping the views of the undecided eighty percent, we turn on each other – a waste of social and political capital that is misguided, misplaced, and profoundly short-sighted. There is a reason why the rabbis taught that a person who maligns someone in public has no place in the world to come, why slander is akin to the spilling of blood. There is a reason why the rabbis teach that the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed due to baseless hatred. If the Torah reading teaches that holiness, sanctity, and the presence of God are found in face-to-face dialogue between one person and another, then the opposite must be true as well. To malign another person, especially publicly, is not just a personal failing; it is a desecration of God’s name. It is an act that diminishes holiness, replacing sacred presence with divine exile.

There are no shortcuts, it’s one on one, it takes time. Not once, but twice this past week, I sat down for coffee with people with whom I disagree – one to the right of me, one to the left. We talked, we disagreed, and most of all we listened. We did so respectfully, ending both exchanges wiser and warmer for it. I have no expectation that folks in this community – or any community – will agree as to what is or isn’t in the best interests of the Jewish people. Disagreement is inevitable, even necessary. But I do expect that those disagreements will be aired respectfully, in a manner that upholds the dignity of all involved. To do otherwise is a betrayal of the foundational values of our people, values that have sustained us through centuries of debate, diversity, and dissent. To do otherwise is not just divisive: it is to drive God from this world and declare oneself unfit to be a member of our community.

V’asu li mikdash v’shakhanti b’tokham. Make for me a sanctuary so that I may dwell among them. The promise, the challenge to this community – to any community – is to know that God’s presence is experienced not in the silver or gold, not in the wood or the stone. Not in the physical structure, but in the way we inhabit the sacred space of dialogue, the respectful exchange of ideas, with the courage to listen and the humility to recognize that Truth is the possession of God alone. When we enter this sanctuary and, perhaps more importantly, when we leave it. To rise to the challenge and gather the scattered divine sparks embedded in us all. To mend, to heal, to restore. Face to face, like the cherubim of old, reaching out to bring the heavens a little closer to earth.