Ask someone, “What do you yearn for?” and you’re unlikely to get a shopping list of mundane wants and material desires. Yearning and longing lie in the domain of the soul.
What does our innermost soul crave? Self-definition, security, connection. A sense of identity and belonging. We long for a place we call “home.” Rabbi Tatz tells us that the feelings of wistfulness and nostalgia evoked by memories of home are rooted in the universal desire of the neshamah to reconnect with its Source. We are terribly homesick for the place where we belong.
In fact, HaMakom, “The Place,” is one of Hashem’s Names. The Gemara explains: “the world is not His place, rather He is the place of the world.” Prior to creation, there was no space — there was only Hashem. The world cannot be described as a place that contains Him. Instead, He is the place, He contains the world.
The place, or habitat, of a living thing does not merely contain its inhabitants; it gives them identity and presence, and it supplies the environment where they can thrive and grow. When we say that Hashem is the Place of the world, we mean that not only did He create the world, but He also supports and sustains it every moment.
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