Admat Kodesh – Holy Ground – Sinai and Richmond

Admat Kodesh – Holy Ground – Sinai and Richmond

November 15^th, 2013

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

While Moses is tending his father-in-law’s, Jethro’s, flock, he sees a strange sight in the distance and goes towards the bush that is burning yet not consumed.  From that bush God speaks to Moses and says: “Remove your shoes from upon your feet because the ground you are standing on is ‘admat kodesh’ – holy ground.”

What makes ordinary soil ‘holy’?

To answer that question I really need to define the word holy.

Then we need to deal with the implications of that definition.

Clearly in the Torah God specifies that the precise soil where He and Moses meet has transcendent meaning because it is the meeting place between man and God. The planet has inherent kedoshah, holiness, because it is God’s creation and thus we have certain obligations to take care of it. Yet this exact spot is holy because here Moses meets God, the ultimate human experience. But it was not just a tête-à-tête. Moses will leave this meeting under Divine command to lead the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery to freedom and into national existence.” Holiness indicates something that is ultimate, above and beyond all else has happened here. Indeed, Moses was standing on admat kodesh, holy ground.

As best as I can discern, everywhere else in the Bible, human beings declare ‘holy ground.’ When Jacob sleeps at the place he will call Beth El, he proclaims that God was in that place and makes it special by pouring oil on its stones. After the Tabernacle is built in the wilderness of Sinai, every time and every place it is erected, the specific place for the Ark with the Ten Commandments is chosen by Moses and Aaron. Solomon will build the First Temple on the mountain top and this meeting place for God and Israel becomes holy forever. Each of these places has transcendent meaning. It never loses its holiness. It is holy, sacred, sanctified – forever and ever.

This is a critical concept:  transcendent meaning  caused by a transcendent event can change the status of otherwise mundane soil.

Death does this too.

A cemetery is admat kodesh, holy ground. It obtains this status because our human body, created in God’s image is, after God Himself, the holiest thing in existence. Our body is holier than the Torah. When buried in ordinary soil, it changes its status to admat kodesh, holy ground, and imbues that status to the entire area, even where no one is buried. That changes our behavior. We don’t eat on a cemetery. We don’t play music – except for military honors – on a cemetery. And we are not supposed to walk on graves, a difficult task in cemeteries without distinct demarcations.  Death, as well as birth, is a transcendent event for us and for God. It is the ultimate event in human existence, for, in traditional Jewish belief, it marks the transition of the soul’s existence from this world to the-world-to-come and life everlasting.

Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor and all the named and unnamed places of the genocide of our people is holy ground. I say that not because of the horrors that occurred there but rather because death has ultimate meaning and thus ultimate power. Death sanctifies the soil. Besides all else that can be rightfully said, the death of our people in those places was testimony to the eternality of the Jewish people to triumph over that evil. Those places are admat kodesh because our people there maintained their dignity, their Jewishness, their honor, their humanity and in death triumphed over evil. Their suffering and their humanity made ordinary blood-soaked and blood-stained soil admat kodesh, holy ground.

And you don’t play baseball on admat kodesh.

We do not have proprietary rights over suffering because of the Holocaust.

We do have a deeper empathy and sensitivity to suffering because of the Holocaust.

We do not own the word “slavery” because of Egyptian bondage.

We gave the world the belief in “equality” - that no person will be a master and none a slave.

Admat kodesh, holy ground is not just on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem or wherever was the Burning Bush.

Admat kodesh, holy ground is not just where our dead our buried, but wherever anyone is buried.

Admat kodesh, holy ground is not just where our people have suffered, but wherever other people have suffered, too.

If God could hear the groans of the Israelites in Egypt, then He could hear those of the African-Americans in Richmond, Virginia.

You don’t play baseball at Arlington National Cemetery.

You don’t play baseball at Auschwitz.

And maybe they shouldn’t play baseball at Shockoe Bottom either.

Shabbat Shalom.