The Holiness of Closing the Door

Think about the last time you put your phone down at dinner and felt guilty about it.

Not because you were missing something important. Just because you weren't looking. That low-level anxiety is so familiar that most of us have stopped noticing it. We have accepted it as the background noise of modern life.

But it is worth asking: when did privacy become something to apologize for?

We live in an age that has confused openness with virtue. Social media taught us that vulnerability is connection and pulling back is a flaw. The influencer generation turned the inside of our homes into content. And somewhere along the way, keeping something sacred, something just for the people we love, started to feel almost selfish.

Judaism has always known otherwise.

There is a moment in the Torah that most people rush past. Balak hires Balaam, the most sought-after professional curser of the ancient world, to destroy the Jewish people. Balaam climbs his mountain, surveys the Israelite camp below, opens his mouth. And blesses them instead. The Talmud explains what stopped him. He saw that no tent opening faced another. No neighbor could peer into anyone else's private space. The people had built a culture of dignity into the very architecture of their lives. And that, say the rabbis, is what turned the curse into the blessing we still sing today: "How goodly are your tents, O Jacob" (Num. 24:5).

The tents were goodly because of what they protected.

There is a kabbalistic concept that goes even deeper. The mystics call it divine contraction (tzimtzum). Before creation, God's infinite light filled everything. For the world to exist at all, God had to intentionally contract. Pull back. Make space. The most creative act in history was an act of withdrawal. Without it, nothing else could be.

That is a radical idea. And we need it today.

We cannot build real relationships while simultaneously performing for an audience. Love requires privacy. Grief requires privacy. The kind of growth that actually changes a person requires privacy. When everything is shareable, nothing stays sacred.

Shabbat reminds me of this every week. It is when the most magical moments happen for my family and me. No screens, no notifications, no audience. And yet those moments, precisely because they are unrecorded and unshared, remain etched in our hearts in a way that no photograph ever could.

The Hebrew word for holiness, kedusha, comes from a root meaning set apart. To sanctify something is to designate it as not for everyone. Holiness is not only what you bring in. It is also what you keep out.

Not every thought belongs online. Not every struggle needs a witness. The moments that shape us most tend to happen quietly, away from the scroll, in the presence of only the people who matter most.

"How goodly are your tents, O Jacob" was a blessing born from the sight of a people who understood that. May we have the wisdom, and the courage, to protect those spaces again.