What Makes Holy Ground
What Makes Holy Ground
It is commonly understood amongst Jews that there are ritual items that we cannot simply throw away. A siddur, or a Torah scroll, or really anything that has the sacred name of God, must be dealt with in a special manner: we put it into a genizah for safe-keeping, and then we take those items and bury them. We do the same with certain ritual objects, even if they do not contain the name of God. It is logical, of course, that we are careful around objects that hold sanctity.
But what happens to something that's too big to put in a genizah, like a holy place itself?
The Mishnah addresses this question directly, but I think the first thing that is useful to understand is the principle מַּעֲלִין בַּקּוֹדֶשׁ וְלֹא מוֹרִידִין - we go up in holiness, and we do not go down. We can make things more sacred, but something that is considered holy cannot then be used instead for mundane purposes. There is no ritual manner in which we can simply extract the holiness from an object or even a place, because places and objects gain this sacred through their usage. A synagogue is sacred because of all the prayer, the housing of the Torah scroll, the Torah learning which has happened within it. We cannot undo our prayers and learning, so how can it become non-sacred?
But practically speaking, a community might need to sell, for example, a synagogue building. This very building was once left by its community to build a bigger synagogue; it was the members of what would become New London Synagogue who rescued it from demolition.
Our sages of blessed memory write in the Mishnah (Megillah 3:1) that when someone must sell a synagogue, or an item such as an ark, we may only do that to use the funds to purchase something even more sacred. This is how we preserve the principle of elevation in holiness: through the use of the funds.
The Mishnah goes like this: The community may sell the town square to build a synagogue; may sell a synagogue to purchase an ark; may sell an ark to purchase the cloths for the scrolls; may sell scrolls that are not Torah (like a megillah) to purchase Torah scrolls. But the other way around is forbidden; we may not sell the Torah scroll to purchase other scrolls, or sell those for Torah covers, or sell those for an ark, or sell an ark to build a synagogue. Even the idea of a one-to-one trade, like selling a synagogue to build a new synagogue, is controversial. The Shulchan Aruch (probably the most famous code of Jewish law) very helpfully says: regarding selling something on one level of holiness for something on that same level: יש אוסרים ויש מתירין: some forbid it and some permit it.
I was reflecting on this principle in November, when I was invited by a friend to go to a vigil at an unconsecrated cemetery. The concept of an unconsecrated cemetery seems, to me, deeply counterintuitive. However, in Christian culture, there are rituals for cemeteries to cause them to become “consecrated ground”. Our tradition does not have the same structure around what makes the place “consecrated”; just as a synagogue is sacred because of the Torah and the prayer and the learning, a cemetery is sacred due to its usage. The fact that it is a cemetery, a place where we bury our deceased, causes it to become holy. In modernity, some Jewish communities have developed various ritual customs for creating a new cemetery, but that is a modern development. The ceremony does not legally effect the holiness of the land; the fact that we bury there causes it to be sacred.
In the case of the “unconsecrated cemetery”, there is a very simple “how”: it was a Christian culture, and within that religious tradition, the space has to be actively consecrated to be considered sacred ground.
More interesting, of course, is the “why”. Why have an unconsecrated cemetery at all?
The Crossbones Graveyard is tucked away in Southwark, by the river, and in the shadow of the Shard. You could easily walk by and not know it exists. It is mostly marked out by large red iron gates, which are covered in multicoloured ribbons, and a small plaque that speaks of its history. Before it was known as the Crossbones Graveyard, it was referred to as the Single Woman’s Churchyard: an interesting name, as it was, of course, not a churchyard.
The origins are recorded in John Stow’s Survey of London, written in 1598. Stow writes:
I have heard of ancient men, of good credit, report, that these single women were forbidden the rites of the church, so long as they continued that sinful life, and were excluded from Christian burial, if they were not reconciled before their death. And therefore there was a plot of ground called the Single Woman's churchyard, appointed for them far from the parish church.
Not only was the Single Woman’s Churchyard not a churchyard, but “Single Woman” was a somewhat euphemistic usage. Since the mid-12th Century, this area of Southwark had been outside of London’s legal jurisdiction. You may know it as the Liberty of the Clink. It was overseen instead by the Bishop of Winchester, who allowed certain money-making activities to be licensed and therefore taxed within the Liberty. This included the licensing of brothels. It was the women who worked there - and, I’m sure, also on the streets themselves - who were these Single Women considered unfit for Christian burial.
To clarify, because I think this is truly chilling: it was the Bishop of Winchester who oversaw the licensing of these brothels for financial benefit, and then also declared that the “Single Women” were not fit to be buried in consecrated ground.
(I do hope it goes without saying, but the kind of religious authority that benefits from and exploits the marginalised while denying them the basic dignity of proper burial is exactly the kind of religious authority I would want us all to be miles away from.)
The story of the graveyard is too long (and frankly too exciting) to do justice to here today. The long and short of it is that it continued to be unconsecrated, though it soon became the final resting place of many more local people - specifically, the poorest of the poor, as the area became a notorious slum. Archaeologists estimate up to 15,000 bodies are buried there. And after being closed in 1853, it lay mostly quiet, until the 90s brought with it questions about redevelopment.
Which leads me back to the overarching question: what does it mean for something to be sacred? I mentioned that a significant difference in the Christian culture overseeing the Single Woman’s Graveyard and our own is in whether sacredness is legally overseen or simply a matter of usage. In that Christian culture, the religious organisation has the authority to declare a place sacred, and also maintains the authority to undo that status. Jewish culture requires no legal ritual to declare such a space sacred; it becomes holy by virtue of its use. Likewise, there is no ritual or legal authority for deconsecrating it. The sacred nature of that ground is no longer in our hands; it will remain that way in perpetuity. And unlike a synagogue building, where the important aspect is what the community did in the building, the cemetery is sacred because of the bodies that are still present there.
There is no logical, emotional, or spiritual fix to allow us to put profit before the sanctity of a graveyard. It is sacred land and it will remain sacred land. I suspect this is why it is such a commonality among Jews that when we travel, we so often visit Jewish cemeteries, even long beyond having any personal connection with anyone buried there.
I want to suggest that I think our vision of the nature of the sacred is a much more, well, natural understanding. Sacredness is sticky: it isn’t declared by authority and removed by authority; it is brought into being by human behaviour and emotion, and it is not so easy to dispel. Sacredness is emotional: it is something that should move us. The call for respect of spaces of Torah and prayer should hopefully be deeper than someone else’s authority. The call for respect and solemnity in the resting place of the dead, all the more so.
I know the normal terminology around the sacred is supernatural language. I suppose I am not so interested in the difference between the natural and the spiritual here. I think that the human soul knows how to connect to that which cannot be pointed to; we know, by our nature, how to love, how to yearn and hope, how to see beyond the concrete to the meaning behind it. Sacredness is another element of that.
The next step of the story of the Crossbones Graveyard kicks off in the 90s, in response to the question of redevelopment. London is not rich in space for development, after all. But in the 90s, when TFL found themselves needing to pause work because they were finding human remains, the local community activated in an attempt to save the forgotten cemetery. They began holding monthly vigils for those who were buried in the cemetery. It was at November’s vigil that I first heard this piece of local history. The vigil is fairly simple: a candle is lit, intentions are stated - prayer-like, but vague enough in their religious sensibilities to be open to anyone who might come by - and evermore ribbons are attached to the gate. And a community has developed in the decades of monthly gatherings; as well as the ritual acts of remembering the forgotten, the community gathers to share songs and poetry, and to remember their own losses. They created something sacred in a space that was declared unfit for such purposes by the religious authorities.
They also resisted with the somewhat unique method of secret gardening. As the community tells it, in the midst of the drama of redevelopment questions, the security guards who were supposed to keep them at bay ended up helping them to create a memorial garden in the cemetery. Due to their guerilla garden, they ended up in partnership with the Bankside Open Spaces Trust to campaign for the protection of the memorial garden. And they succeeded. The Garden of Remembrance has been open to the public at odd hours since 2015, and is protected on lease for at least another thirty years.
What makes a space sacred? What enacts holiness?
What this strange piece of London's history taught me is that the sacred does not belong in the hands of religious authority. The sacred is born via what regular people do. We bury our dead; we pray; we learn; we gather as a community. Those are the better elements of human nature. The urge that says it is important to remember and honour, against the odds, is the urge we should be striving for and listening to.
As funny as it might be to say this in the position I’m standing in: the truth of the matter is that, much of the time, we should not be looking to people who stand on podiums and wear titles to learn what it means to understand what is sacred. Sometimes we need to look to regular people who build memorial gardens and campaign for the protection of their local graveyards of the unknown and uncared for.
And what I hear in this piece of sacred history is a very particular lesson: that in a place of darkness, we must learn to shine a light; that in a place of forgetting, we must learn to remember; and that in a place of paving over, we must grow a garden.
Shabbat shalom.
Comments
Post a Comment