A letter from Jewish Studies to Gettysburg College Hillel and Jewish students

Chag Pesach Sameach, Hillel!

It’s hard to feel celebratory right now. Many of you are feeling something unfamiliar—like your Jewishness has suddenly become something seen, questioned, or even targeted, an object judged before you’re understood. That can leave you feeling unsettled, even disoriented. If you feel that way, you’re not imagining it. And you’re not alone.

And yet, this is exactly where ritual begins to matter most—not as decoration, not as something we do when things are easy, but as something that holds us when they are not. Judaism has long understood that sacred space is not only geographic. It is created, a sacred space in time, so to speak. The rabbis, after the destruction of the Second Temple, built a world in which study, memory, and shared practice became a kind of portable sanctuary–a “third temple”........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)