The Sacred Potential of Physical Spaces

“How awesome is this place! This is nothing other than the House of God – this is the gate to heaven!” (Genesis 28:17)

So declares Jacob in this week’s parashah, when he wakes up from his dream of a ladder reaching up to heaven and realizes he is in a sacred place. 

In recent decades, American Jews have redefined their relationships with sacred spaces. Synagogues have moved from cities to suburbia – and some back again. Structures that used to be full are now sparsely attended. Younger Jews often gather in less conventional spaces, sometimes in informal and ad-hoc arrangements. The Covid pandemic disrupted these dynamics, but it also contributed powerful new ways of connecting online. The accessibility of Zoom has led many to wonder whether physical spaces are still worth the investment.  

The benefits of physical spaces for Jewish institutions of prayer, learning, and gathering are too great to ignore. A closer look at Jacob’s encounter offers two reasons why.

Physical Jewish spaces offer stability and connection. In one telling of Jacob’s story, its holiness was rooted in its past and its future. Rashi explains that this was actually the same site as the binding of Isaac, and it would later become the site of the Temple. In this view, Jacob had a meaningful experience because he could tap into the stability of a sacred past and future. To foster connection to the Jewish people, there have to be places to go that hold our story and the inspiration it has held for generations.

The challenge is to ensure that sacred space does not become static and stale. We know that the past significance of a place doesn’t speak to many American Jews. Just because a particular synagogue was sacred for my parents or grandparents doesn’t mean the place makes any claim on me now.  

Physical Jewish spaces are a container for ever-evolving, dynamic gathering. There’s another view that the site of Jacob’s dream had no sacred past at all. It was just a travelers’ way-station on his journey. His dream was actually a vision about the revelation at Sinai, which catalyzed the Jewish people’s relationship with a Torah that would accompany them wherever they went, beyond one mountain in the desert. When Jacob declares “How awesome is this place,” it has nothing to do with the past, rather, it’s about about the potential of what he could create:

“This is nothing other than a place fitting to become a sacred space…I only beheld this vision so that I could make it a place for God” (Radak on Genesis 28:17)

The place where Jacob slept only became sacred because he stretched his imagination of who the Jewish people could become and how this place could foster purposeful gathering. This offers a more dynamic model of sacred space rooted in imagination and potential. When we walk into a physical space where we know people show up with purpose, it creates a sense of anticipation and expectation that something meaningful will happen there, a taste of Jacob’s excitement about the potential that can emerge in a particular place. 

Physical spaces should serve your goals and your people, not become an end in and of themselves. As Jewish organizations, we must constantly ask ourselves: Do we have the space needed to offer stable access to community and connection with each other? Are our physical spaces placing too many constraints on the real work we want to do? 

I am proud to lead an organization, the Hadar Institute, that has prioritized investing in people, programs and content, while approaching physical space as a necessary conduit for these goals. Hadar has been long-term tenants of a synagogue since our inception in 2007. In Manhattan especially, synagogue landlords need tenants to help pay their bills, which allows weekday learning institutions to focus on their own work – without exclusive ownership over a building. We’ve pursued this arrangement because sharing space allows for more agility, freeing up resources to focus on the core purpose of the space.

Hadar moved to a new home this year in a new rebuilt synagogue on 93rd Street. The building was intentionally and thoughtfully designed to be shared with our new synagogue landlords, allowing us to create a home for Jewish prayer, learning, and community characterized by both stability and dynamism. The walls have already held the sounds of hundreds of voices, from dancing in a Sefer Torah to lively havruta (students aged twenty to eighty) to meditative song circles. 

The magic of what physical spaces can hold is critical to sacred work, but there is nothing sacred about any particular space – just ample sacred potential.

Jewish communities should continue to invest in physical spaces, so long as we don’t get distracted by placing too much value on the place itself. What matters are the people and the purpose contained within. When we gather with purpose, these spaces become stable containers for our values, inspiring us to keep dreaming up new potential.

Rabbi Aviva Richman is a Rosh Yeshiva at the Hadar Institute.