Va-Yetse opens with Ya’akov’s flight from Be’er Sheva in southern Israel to Haran in modern-day Syria, where his mother’s family lives.  Ya’akov’s flight from home is a reaction to Esav’s threat to kill him over a berachah / blessing.  On the way, Ya’akov chances upon a place, and because the sun is setting, he decides to sleep there. 

There, God reveals Himself to Ya’akov, through a dream; Ya’akov dreams about steps reaching heaven upon which angels ascend and descend.  The Torah’s primary purpose in highlighting this event is to convey that although Ya’akov has left home, he will still receive God’s protection.  Indeed, Ya’akov exclaims, “God is in this place, and I didn’t know it!”  The place is named Beit-El, “the house of God,” and will now, because of this incident, become “kadosh,” sacred. 

The Torah, however, at first identifies it as “makom,” which in modern Hebrew means simply “a place.”  (Comparative historical studies teach that “makom“ may have indicated a sacred site.)  Initially for Ya’akov it is just an ordinary place.   In Nahum Sarna’s words, “To Jacob, however, it is a profane place with no prior tradition of holiness, and he treats it with indifference.”  The events at the rest-stop open the door to the issue of sacred and ordinary places, and sacred and ordinary as concepts beyond places. 

Even the secular-minded make value distinctions between places and spaces.  Some are more “special” than others – places of personal historical significance, e.g., where two people first met, a place of achievement, or where couples became engaged or married.  Our homes retain special significance for us, even those from which we have moved.  And within our homes, we may invite company to socialize in many of our rooms, but rarely do we invite them into our bedrooms.  We make distinctions.  Some places are relatively “sacred” and our attitudes toward them lead us to set rules to protect their sanctity.

And so it is for religious places.  As the Holy Land, Israel is sacred and we treat it with even greater respect and honor because it was divinely designated as our homeland and because of its history.  For the same reasons, Jerusalem is known as “Ir ha-Kodesh” the holy city, and within it, the Beit Ha-Mikdash, Jerusalem Temple, has a special religious sanctity.  There are rules to safeguard its holiness.

And so, too, the synagogue.  A baraita in the Talmud (Megillah 28a) teaches that the synagogue, that is, the room where the Torah is kept and where we pray, is sacred and we should not treat it in an ordinary manner – we are not permitted to eat or drink in it, to act with levity in it, to do ordinary business in it, even to use it as a shortcut or merely as a place of protection from heat or sun.   

We face the challenge to not “desecrate,” which does not mean to destroy, but rather to treat what is sacred as if it were ordinary.  Treating the sacred as ordinary has the same effect as if your guests were to treat your house with disrespect or treat your bedroom as if it were just any other place.  Sadly, cotemporary Jewish culture and behavior too often has not followed the Talmud and has diminished our sacred places to a point that many do not recognize sanctity and its vital essence.

In Torah teaching, “kedushah,” sanctity, was also applied to time.  Just as treating “special” days like anniversaries and birthdays as if they were ordinary, so too does treating sacred time as ordinary time have a deleterious effect.  And so, too, with speech and deeds.  Our words matter; our deeds matter.  Sacred words, like Torah and prayer, are qualitatively different from ordinary words like those used for business, and still yet different from vulgar language, whether with curse words or insulting words.  Our society continues to ignore the differences.  There are also sacred deeds, like acts of chesed (personal kindness) and tsedakah (righteous financial acts), ordinary, routine, and mundane acts, and sinful acts. 

Ya’akov’s changed experience and attitude toward an ordinary place to “Beit El” – “house of God”  — reminds us of a crucial and glorious Torah distinction, which is applied to space, time, words, and deeds.  It is an entire Torah outlook toward the world, with faint echoes in non-Torah society upon which we can draw; it is a world to which our Torah heritage gives us access, and one that we can build and preserve.  We do so by personally embracing the concept of “kedushah” (holiness), living it, and transmitting it to our children and grandchildren.   Shabbat Shalom.