As a new year begins, I find myself passionate about how I can empower students and their families to create a school and a personal environment that embraces sacred space. I am probably more sensitive to this because of world and national politics. I want our students and faculty to relate to our community as not only sacred, but approachable as well.
What does sacred mean? To come up with this answer, I turned to my son’s dictionary, the Scholastic Children’s Dictionary and it says that sacred has two meanings:
Personally, I think of sacred as encompassing Shalom. Sacredness can't exist without a peaceful environment. The Fall Festivals jump-start the year by creating opportunities to find within ourselves and our environment sacred space. It is a time of deep reflection and of building a spiritual center. On Rosh HaShanah, we celebrate the New Year by dipping apples in honey as a way to not only taste sweetness, but to create a sweet environment. On Yom Kippur, we reflect in prayer and contemplation on how we can become better and healthier individuals. And just five days later, we take our renewed spirits out of our houses and work to create a joyous space within our physical environment as move into the sukkah for Sukkot.
I always try to translate each word I write in Hebrew when I send out any correspondence. When saying the word "Shalom," I don't need to translate the word. Yet, do you really know what it means? In Hebrew, one can better understand a word by knowing the root of a word and then looking at what other words use that root. Did you know that the root of the word "Shalom" makes up the Hebrew words for complete, whole, perfection, intact, compensated, etc.?
So in order to give our children, we need to have them reflect on not sacredness, but on Shalom (peace). Our children don't necessarily understand what sacred means, but they do understand Shalom and it is our job to connect them with how they can better be part of the solution of how to create an environment filled with shalom which is what I ultimately think of as sacredness. In the coming months, I will be looking for ways to build a love of peace for each and every child on their level. Please join me in this search.
Our prayers are filled with the word Shalom. Think of the words of our prayer that we say many times during the course of our services and sing to dozens of melodies.
May the one who creates harmony above make peace for us and for all Israel, and for all who dwell on the earth. And say: Amen.
Another prayer that is even more appropriate for our school goal of creating sacred space comes from the Shema and its blessings-specifically the Hashikivenu.
Ufros, aleynu sukkat shelomeha--Spread over us the shelter of your peace.
Each day our people recite the above line and we actively work towards building peace within our spaces. We ask for the strength to build and spread that shalom or completeness throughout our environments. As we approach the holiday of Sukkot, remember that the shelter of the sukkah can be transferred to mean every shelter within our lives as seen in the above prayer.
May our lives be filled with peace, not only in our homes, our schools, Adat Shalom, but also within our own personal thoughts and minds. May we have the strength to really mirror a peaceful being and pass that teaching onto our children.
L’Shalom,
Toni Bloomberg Grossman