Holy and Profane in the Travels of Rabbi Jacob Sapir

Rabbi Jacob Sapir uses the word qadosh numerous times in his travelogue, ‘Even Sapir. His adopted city of Jerusalem is holy, as are its study halls and synagogues. So are the Jewish people and the Torah. The holiness of these entities is absolute in Sapir’s mind, and this is to be expected from a religious Jew with his Lithuanian rabbinic background. What happens to his view of holiness, however, when he travels? Is the entire world outside Jerusalem profane? I shall examine various ways in which Sapir “discovers” holiness and applies this concept to people, places, and activities during his travels in Egypt, Yemen, and especially India. Foreign Jewish communities are holy, even as they assimilate non-Jewish practices, but what surprises is the way that Sapir associates Jewish holy actions with his study of Hindu idolatry and his experience traveling through the backwaters of Kerala in India. He even acknowledges that Hindus impute a subjective holiness to their "idolatrous" practices. My study of Sapir’s concept of a holiness connected with foreign locales and foreign actions raises the question of whether this is a new concept in the history of Jewish thought.