According to the ancient Babylonian myth of the creation of the world, the culmination of the creation process is the erection of a temple to the pagan deity, Marduk. What that structure makes clear is that the holiness of space is primary, and that its' crowning representation is the holy space where Marduk was worshiped. In stark contrast to the glorification of holy space, the Torah's account of Creation establishes the capstone of creation not as any place in particular, or even any space at all. Instead, the pinnacle of creation is the establishment of holy time: Shabbat, the Sabbath day.
In a cultural milieu in which people were expecting the Creation of the world to conclude with the creation of a holy place, the story of the Torah must have been shocking indeed. Creating holiness in time became the pinnacle of Jewish religion, and the primary contribution of Judaism to a world of harmony and peace.
That same emphasis continues in today's Torah portion, and it is even less expected here. In Parashat Ki Tissa, and in last week's Torah portion as well, God as been instructing Moses about the building of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle that the Jews were able to carry with them throughout their wilderness wanderings. The Mishkan served as the place where the Israelites could make their offerings and sacrifices in accordance with God's will (as recorded in the Torah), simultaneously providing a real center to their camp. Wherever they were in the Sinai Peninsula, the center of their community was the Mishkan, both topographically and spiritually.
Given the importance of the Mishkan, and the great attention to each detail of its construction, it is shocking to observe that the instructions of the Tabernacle come in six general units, and that the seventh unit deals with Shabbat! Here too, the pinnacle of holy space is holy time. The Torah relays God's words that "nevertheless you must keep My Sabbaths, for this is a sign between Me and you throughout the ages, that you may know that I, Adonai, have consecrated you."
God goes on to prohibit all melakhah (conventionally translated as "work") on Shabbat, the violation of which is a capital offense. Finally, God brings this verse back, full circle, to the very beginnings of the Torah: "The Israelite people shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout the ages as a covenant for all time: it shall be a sign for all time between Me and the people of Israel. For in six days Adonai made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day God ceased from work and was refreshed."
Why is the law of Shabbat observance, of the requirement to refrain from all labor on Shabbat, inserted at the end of the details for building the Tabernacle? What is God trying to tell us?
It is clear that without a willingness to create holy time, our holy spaces will remain empty shells, mocking the very piety they were built to sustain. If we build lovely synagogues without also clearing the time to worship in them regularly, if we hire talented rabbis, cantors, and educators but we don't make the time to learn from them and to study with them, then all we have is holy space, and neglected space at that.
No matter how elegant the facility, regardless of how expensive its upkeep, there is simply no substitute for human involvement. Our presence is necessary to give our institutions life, and our involvement is necessary to preserve the ancient and wonderful way of life that Judaism provides the world.
Judaism understood, from the start, that holy space without holy time was a mockery of true religion. That's why the pinnacle of creation is Shabbat. Six days were spent creating a place (the world and all it contains) in which holiness could be made real, but the fulfillment of the promise of place moves us beyond the tangible, into the realm of time.
The point, then, is that even a religion as profound and as joyous as Judaism cannot hope to transform our lives, let alone our world, if we will not invest the time necessary to let it work its wonders on our hearts. If we don't sanctify the Sabbath day, if we don't regularly attend our synagogue's worship services, if we don't put aside time for Jewish learning on a regular basis, then we can't hope to realize the potential that Judaism offers.
Instead, we find it too simple to fall into the Babylonian fallacy—to regard a willingness to sustain a sacred place as sufficient to safeguard our values and our dreams. While contributing to the upkeep of Jewish institutions is indeed a necessary base, it is but a start.
The task of the Jew, to establish the sovereignty of God in the here-and-now, takes much more than just its proper place. It requires a good deal of heart and soul. And cultivating those precious and evanescent virtues takes time.
Shabbat Shalom!