Out of My Mind: No Sanctuary in My Temple’s Sanctuary

We do not have religious freedom in the United States anymore. We cannot think of ourselves as being free if we must pass through a gate with an armed guard, be searched and go through a magnetometer and then see three armed guards outside the “sanctuary.”

Over the years since 9/11 security has increased in a slow evolution—or maybe devolution, marking our deteriorating sense of being secure. Since last October 7th our insecurity has increased exponentially forcing major increases in our sense of vulnerability. This year, for the first time, there was an armed guard inside the Sanctuary. This harsh fact indicated that there is no true sanctuary. No place to run. No place to hide. God might have prepared a table for us in the presence of our enemies, but we feel their presence, and the shadow of death casts its pall.

There is no sanctuary in my Temple’s Sanctuary, nor should there be. I cannot wall off the world—the pain, suffering, anger, and anxiety-with brick walls, no matter how thick, or with stained glass, no matter how delicate its beauty. The world must penetrate, poke, prod, and challenge my calm, my rest, and indeed, my soul.

My meditations are filled with the world. October 7th intrudes and could not and should not be kept out. I hear the cries of its victims and feel their fear and terror. I hear the shouts of joy from the terrorists as they celebrate the carnage. Still, the bombing, killing, and dying in Gaza haunt me, as they must. I feel guilty for admiring the ingenuity of Israeli Intelligence in the deadly pager and walkie-talkie operation. We are forbidden, both by Scriptures and the Talmud, from rejoicing at the suffering and deaths of our enemies. When the Egyptians were drowning in the Red Sea, G-d rebuked the angels with a stinging rhetorical question, “My creations are drowning, and you are singing before me?”

I bring into this most permeable Sanctuary the nearly 100,000 Israelis who have had to flee Hezbollah rocket attacks and are now homeless in their homeland. I bring hope for success and horror at the costs of engaging violently with Lebanon—a once peaceful and even pluralistic nation, now broken by internal strife and external forces that make it the battlefield where Israel fights Iranian proxies. I tremble at the prospects of a nuclear Iran, that swears to destroy Israel and is building the nuclear means to do so.

We pray Sim Shalom, “Grant us peace, Thy most precious gift, Oh Thou eternal source of peace.*” We have prayed a very long time, still peace does not come. Our prayers should not be requests but commitments from us to make peace, and we have failed. We have failed to make peace in our world and in our own hearts.

My Sanctuary cannot be an escape from the world. I cannot pretend a peace I do not feel nor block out the drums of war beating in my heart. I cannot escape my sense of vulnerability nor the sounds of suffering from outside both my own senses and the appropriately permeable walls of both my skin and my Sanctuary.

I know if I let it all in, I will be rendered powerless, and if I block all of it out, I will be useless as a human being. I must find a balance. I must remember that balance is not static—it sways, moves and compensates. Balance is a kind of trembling, and I tremble. I tremble in fear, in gratitude and in awe of the beauty, the horror and the challenge to find enough peace in myself to make some small contribution of peace in my world.

*From Union Hebrew Prayer Book 1948