Making a Place for God

The very first evening of Yaakov’s sojourn to Haran was existentially and religiously loaded:

And Yaakov left Beersheva and set out for Haran. And he came upon a certain place (vayifga bamakon) and stopped there for the night. (Genesis 28:10-11)

Yaakov happened upon an anonymous place (makom). The word “makom” is mentioned in this passage six times and it is the events of this episode which made this “place” significant. Yaakov slept in this place, dreamt of the ladder to heaven in this place and declared this place, God’s place and the gate of the heavens. As a consequence of these events, the rabbinic tradition even found ways to associate this place with Har Habayit – the Temple Mount. What is clear here, though, is that the contextual or “pshat” meaning of the word “makom” here describes a physical location – a holy or sacred place. The rabbinic sage, however, renowned for infusing significance to otherwise unidentified elements of a story, infused this “location” with even deeper religious implications.

It is worth noting before we examine a rabbinic midrash from the Talmudic period, that in rabbinic sources from the period of the Mishnah (the Tannaitic period), the word “makom” served as an epithet or name for God, rendering “Hamakom” as a reference to the “Omnipresent One”. While this particular usage became less common during the Talmudic period, the implications of this idea seem to have affected the religious thinking of the generations which followed as we note in the following midrash on  the above verse (See E. E. Urbach, Hazal, pp. 53-4):

“He came upon a certain place” – Rav Huna [said] in the name of Rabbi Ami: Why do they change the name of the Holy One blessed be He and call Him the “Makom”? It is because He is the Place [Mikomo] of the world, and His world. Said Rabbi Yossi bar Halafta: How do we know whether the Holy One blessed be He is the abode of the world, or whether the world is His abode? From what is written: “Behold, there is a place [Makom] with Me” (Exodus 33:21) – that is, the Holy One blessed be He is the place of the world, and His world is not His place.

Said Rabbi Yitzḥak: It is written: “An abode of the God of eternity.” (Deuteronomy 33:27) How do we do know whether the Holy One blessed be He is the abode of the world, or whether the world is His abode? From what is written: “You are an abode for us” (Psalms 90:1) – that is, the Holy One blessed be He is the abode of the world, but His world is not His abode. (Adapted from Bereishit Rabbah 68:9, Theodore- Albeck ed. pp. 777-8)

This midrash examines the religious implications of calling God the “Omnipresent One”. For the author of this midrash, God is not a material character who exists within the earthly drama; rather, the earthly drama exists within the realm of God. In addition, whereas the storyline of the Torah might have us assume that any particular place might have a special sacred nature, for the sages of this midrash, if God is truly omnipresent, then God can be found anywhere and everywhere.

Obviously, the ideas expressed in this midrash are attempts by these particular sages to come to terms with understanding God’s workings in the world. They are not Jewish dogma since as anyone who studies Jewish texts knows rabbinic Judaism is more about the search than it is about definitive answers. And that is in many ways Judaism’s greatest contribution to religious wisdom.