Fifteen Minutes in the Sanctuary During Coronavirus

“Come for 15 minutes of prayer and meditation,”

the announcement said,

“during the Ten Days of Awe

in our sanctuary.”

I have not been in the sanctuary for many months

or even in the building.

I loved to go to services

on Friday nights with the throngs,

on Saturday mornings with the B’nai Mitzvah families.

But I loved still more

to meditate and pray in that sacred space during the quiet hour

on my own,

before Torah study.

Now we have this opportunity

during the holiest days on our calendar.

A blessing indeed.

I stroll into the building

as if it were mine.

It used to be.

I sanitize my hands and walk on into the sanctuary.

All is open for me, nothing is closed or locked.

The doors of the ארון קדש stand wide open,

five Torah scrolls before me in their white robes,

arrayed for the Holy Days,

the נר תמיד luminous above.

I understand in my heart the urge that other faiths have to genuflect.

Some ceremony, some ritual, is required of this moment.

I recite the שהחינו.

I am five minutes early for my time slot,

but only one other person is seated in the sanctuary.

She leaves after those five minutes,

and nobody else comes in the rest of the time that I am there.

I carry a book in with me.

On this occasion when my heart and my soul will soar higher

than I could follow consciously,

I need readings that will bypass my mind

And address them unswervingly.

Karyn Kedar does that for me.

I open at random and the first reading is perfect

to the moment:

fragile, quiet, but full of promise and joy and comfort and glory.

They say that nothing happens by accident.

But as I move through the book,

reading passages as they catch my eye,

I realize that the entire book is speaking directly

to this moment

of solitude.

Just the open Ark and the Eternal Light and the Torah scrolls

And me.

I am so distracted

by that open Ark.

I read, I ponder, I fill my heart with the words,

and then I look up again and again at the Torah scrolls

and my heart takes flight.

There is a message in this somewhere:

The Holy Ark is tall and narrow,

pointing to the sky,

revealing its treasure to me.

The Eternal Light shines above.

Between them is the long narrow arch of a window

through which I see trees,

leaves glinting in the sunlight

and tossing in the breeze,

and blue sky

and white clouds.

What is this message?

And it comes to me:

God is not in the majestic pompous art that we have fashioned;

God is in the still small voice beyond.

I stand before the open Ark.

I recite the Shema,

and I leave the sanctuary transformed.

My fifteen minutes have stretched into thirty.

God does not mind

and nobody else is even there to care.