Position Paper:
From Susie Handelman, Bar-Ilan University
Dear Fellow RSA Workshop-ers:
I've been thinking for a long while about the questions we were asked to write about. I've decided to start by saying that I am coming to the workshop from Jerusalem, Israel where I have lived for the past nine years. After teaching at the University of Maryland for over 20 years, I accepted a job offer in the Department of English at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv in the fall of 2000, and emigrated to Israel.
I mention my geographical location, because when I look out of my window at the rocks, stones, sun, sky, buildings, and people around me, I see, feel, hear, touch, "the sacred ." The Temple Mount, in the ancient Old City is just about a mile or so walk from my home. That is the place where in Jewish tradition, Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac, where the first and second Temples were built and destroyed, where Muslims believe Mohammed ascended to heaven, and Christians come to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.
So " the sacred " is something very close to me.
I mean to say that physically, I see and feel "earth" and "heaven" "kissing" all the time in Jerusalem, in a more intense way than I do anywhere else in the world.
Jerusalem is situated on the top of a mountain range, a kind of spine dissecting the country, and it overlooks the brown and purple Judean desert to one side, and the green coastal plain down to the Mediterranean Sea on the other. On a clear day, you can see all the way over to Jordan on one side, and almost down to Tel Aviv on the other.
The intense blue sky seems so much closer to your head, and penetrates right down into the very stones of the street.Jerusalem is often called "the golden" because it is built of a special kind of the limestone quarried from the environs. It's a stone that is a very soft, beige and glows golden in the sunset, and especially set off by the deep greens of Jerusalem pines.
This " kissing of heaven and earth" is probably my first stab at defining
the sacred.
There is also a parallel spiritual geography of Jerusalem as a crossroads of all faiths, and all the civilizations which have come through and coveted it, and the people from everywhere who inhabit it. Unfortunately, the various faiths have rarely "kissed" each other. I think Jerusalem has been built and destroyed over 40 times in its several thousand year history.

At the same time, when I look at all these places around me, I also see the scars of all who struggle for Jerusalem. I can see broken stones and ashes from the burning of Jerusalem, 2000 years ago by the Romans, or crusader ruins a few blocks away, or remains of Britsih barracks another few blocks away. I walk daily past plaques attached to buildings on my street a few years ago, one where a bus was blown up in suicide bombings, and the names of those killed is inscribed on it; another where doctor and his daughter lost their lives on the night before her wedding in a restaurant that was blown up by another suicide bomber. There's also a "holy war" going on around me, and every inch of space is contested.So for me the "sacred" is not an abstract or intellectual category, but a daily experience, where one lives on the edge.

I hope you can see why I needed to begin with my location rather than abstract propositions defining the sacred or the religious.
I am both a Jew coming from Jerusalem, and an academic interested in hermeneutics, and the relation of the sacred and secular in literature and philosophy.
From a Jewish point of view, the English words "religious" or "the sacred" are also somewhat foreign.The Bible itself has no word meaning "religion." The Hebrew word "dat," which translates as "religion" is found in the book of Esther, and comes from the Persian. The word the Bible and Jewish tradition use is "Torah," coming from the word "teaching."
Torah is the name given to the holy texts themselves, but also given to any idea, story, comment or interpretation of someone within and faithful to the tradition itself, up until today.
The Torah itself is a "kissing" of heaven on earth, a point of meeting between the human and divine voices, generating ever new Torah in a dialectic between the fixed written text and its ongoing oral interpretations. A Jew is also compared in many sources to a Scroll of torah..a person, that is, who embodies and enacts holiness, is also like a Torah.
The Hebrew word that might approximate " the sacred" is kadosh, and
"kedusha" would mean "holiness."
To translate my personal thoughts now to more academic ones, I recommend an excellent article by the most eminent contemporary the scholars of Jewish mysticism, Moshe Idel, which alas is not available electronically, but which I have brought a copy of with me. It is called "Ganz Andere: Rudolf Otto and the Concepts of Holiness in Jewish Mysticism." (Da'at: a Journal of Jewish philosophy and Kabbalah vol.57-59(2006). Idel shows how Jewish tradition , especially in Jewish mysticism, differs from Otto's famous definition of Holiness and the sacred as what is " completely other ", mysterious, hidden, transcendent. Idel writes that the concept of "connection " including erotic ones, is at the root of the Hebrew word for sacred, KDSH. [ I should note that Hebrew is built around trilateral consonantal roots. ]
The article is complex,but I just want to take a few main points from it.
Idel argues that different religions have different visions of Holiness, and even within the same religion there are different connotations.
The Hebrew root KDSH evokes both separation and sometimes transcendence, but also connection . The holy or sacred is not only what is hidden inexpressible and mysterious and or completely transcendent. In Hebrew , the root KDSH is also the source of the word kiddushin, which means wedding.So the kedusha ,is also about "communion, intimacy, a celebration" between the human and divine.It is performative and transitive-- a mutuality between the heaven and earth.

Now "how does the sacred manifests itself in discourse" was another question asked? That would take me far more space than I have left.But following up on what I said previously, when there is a kissing of heaven and earth in language, we have many layers of meaning, and we also are brought into a flow, into that connection.,and here language becomes song..there is something More in the words, something moving within, and always renewing and giving new life. Rabbi Akiva, one of the great rabbis of Jewish tradition who was martyred by the Romans said "All of Scripture is Holy,but the Song of Songs [ or Song of Solomon] is the holy of holies."
The words of the torah scroll are unpunctuated.One has to add the vowels,the punctuation, and there are also special marks to denote how they are chanted or sung. So I decided to attach a song here as well..a contemporary Israeli version sung by Ehud Bani of a verse form the Song of songs. 2:14.. where the lover addresses the beloved," let me see your countenance, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet and your face lovely." You will need Apple quick time to play it.

I'm also attaching here a story Talmud, about how a great rabbi found his teacher.The Talmud is the encyclopedic collection of what is called Oral Torah-- complied commentaries and debates of generations of rabbis, over 2000 years including law, and lore and history and everything under the sun. This is a story of one of the great rabbinic sages who established the foundations of the Oral Torah just after destruction of the second Temple by the Romans,R Eliezer been Hyrkanos. I'm attaching the first few pages of the first chapter of a book I am finishing on the teacher-student relationship in Jewish thought. I've read and pondered this story endless numbers of times, and I'm interested to see all what you all might make of it. In the rest of the chapter I do a literary and rhetorical analysis of it.

Stories are also "holy." Lastly, I copy for you below what a famous popular contemporary singing rabbi,Shlomo Carelbach, coming from the Hassidic tradition, and a great story teller himself had to say about stories:"

House of Love and Prayer, San Francisco, 5732
Reprinted from the Holy Beggars' Gazette
Transcription by Donna Anderson Maimes

Reb Shlomo Carelbach speaking:

Two people came to Reb Yisroel Rizener: One,
a storyteller who had a book of stories, and
the other, a great scholar who had written
great treatises on halacha [ Jewish law]. So the secretary
asked the Rizhener who he would see first. The
Rebbe says, "I want to see the storyteller
first." The secretary was really astounded
that he would call in this uneducated storyteller
in preference to this great scholar,
but he doesn't say anything. So he ushers in
the little storyteller and the Rebbe looks at
his book and says, "Oh this is such a beautiful
story, it's the greatest story I ever read. The
story is really holy." Then he asks to see the
scholar and his great treatise on halacha. He
is looking at the book, and he says. "Oh this
is so deep, it is really from Mt. Sinai." The
they both leave and the secretary comes in an
says, "I don't understand it. Here is a great
scholar who has studied many years, who is one
of the greatest men, and you ask him to come
in second. First you hear the storyteller."
"So." the Rebbe says. "I'm just doing it the
way God did it in the Torah. First Godwas telling stories -- He told the story of
creation, the story of the flood, the stories
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. the story of
slavery, the story of redemption, and then He
led us before Sinai. After he told us all
these stories he gave us the laws."

Reb Nachman said God created man because He loves stories.
The whole world is God telling a story. God is telling us
stories, creating the world, creating people, telling long
stories. There is such a thing as prayer, which is very
deep, but, Reb Nachman says, prayer is not the deepest depths
of closeness to God. The deepest depths of closeness to God
is when you can tell God a story. The Tree of Knowledge
is theories and the Tree of Life is stories.
Everything we understand comes
from our consciousness. Where do stories originate?
Imagination. The truth is, the story comes from
beyond my consciousness, but it flows into my
consciousness. The story itself is really beyond.
Reb Nachman says when you dream, you always
dream stories, not theories. When your imagination
is completely free, then you dream stories. When
people sit and tell each other stories, they
really become friends.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

You know we are living in a world where
there is hardly anything that children do not
know. But, you know what they are missing:
stories. Stories are so real that they are
both old and new. They are so holy and so deep.
They touch something in the soul.