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We have nothing to fear but fear
itself
I’d like to begin my reflection today
with a personal story from when I was in my first year of college at the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I’m hoping with the football game
still a good month and a half away, no one will hold that against me
during my remarks this morning. It’s important to know that at the point
in my life I’m about to describe, I was not feeling particularly
connected with either the Jewish community or to the religious rituals
of our tradition. And since today is after all, Yom Kippur, I will
confess to you that as I was facing my first High Holy Days away from my
family, I was strongly drawn to the possibility of skipping services at
Hillel altogether and finding something much more entertaining to do
with my time on those days.
I did decide, I imagine mostly out of guilt, to attend the first day
Rosh Hashanah services and they just did not click for me at all. I made
a promise to myself at that point that I would not be back for Yom
Kippur. One day, later that week, I found myself speaking with a fellow
dormitory resident who happened also to be Jewish and from somewhere on
Long Island.
This guy was definitely one of the “cool dudes” in our dorm; Someone who
spent as little time as possible in his classes and as much time as he
could enjoying himself in a fairly wide variety of ways. He was also a
person who seemed to care little for any of the official Jewish events
that were happening on campus, and so I assumed he might be game for
playing Yom Kippur hookey with me and heading out to explore some as yet
undiscovered byway of our new home.
I was completely taken aback by his reaction. He expressed shock at my
suggestion that we skip out on services and he even pleaded with me to
go with him for the very simple and powerful reason that in doing so, I
would avoid calling down any Divine wrath upon myself for the coming
year. Equally amazed by his response, I was sure he was joking with me,
but it became quite apparent that he was in fact dead serious. The
predictable postscript to this story is that immediately following
Neilah and the break-fast, he lost no time in returning to the pursuits
that completely absorbed him prior to the onset of his high holy day
religiosity.
Looking back on this episode from a twenty plus year perspective, it is
clear to me now that both I and my college acquaintance were off the
mark in our respective assessments of what was potentially at stake in
our decision to engage or not engage with the high holy day experience.
He was definitely caught in a hypocritical and superficial reading of
how one should respond to the call of these days.
And in his defense, I’m sure this approach was one that was modeled for
him elsewhere in his life. But I was wrong too, in the way that I
treated them so lightly and in the way that I scoffed at the deep
seriousness with which he spoke about them.
Though I believe his perspective was distorted, he did understand
something about the depth and intensity embedded within the Days of Awe
to which I was quite oblivious.
The reality that we all know very well is that there is a significant
amount of imagery and affect within high holy day worship that can bring
us into stark confrontation with our own mortality. We hear references
over and over again to the book of life and though a book of death is
never explicitly mentioned, its presence is felt with great certainty.
We hear the warnings about how all of our deeds carry weight and how
they are somehow recorded in the cosmic scheme of things.
Finally, we are exposed to the symbolic near death experience of Yom
Kippur itself, as we withdraw from attending to all dimensions of our
physicality for the entire day and, according to traditional practice,
wear clothing which evokes our day of burial.
Who could blame someone experiencing all of this for the first, or even
the twentieth time, for assuming that we are meant to be frightened by
what we encounter as we make our way through this sacred period of the
year?
I believe however that the intent of the high holy day process is not
for us to come away as more fearful people, but rather to come away
feeling more alive. How do we square this goal with the seemingly fear
inducing content of so much of the liturgy?
The first part of an answer has to do with identifying a linguistic
distinction in Hebrew that does not always translate so clearly into
English. Some of you may remember the old example of how the Eskimo or
Inuit people have 20 different terms in their language for snow. Now, I
have been told quite a few times that this is not in fact accurate, but
the point about how different languages frame reality in different ways
holds in any case.
Similarly in Hebrew there are no fewer than eight words which express
various shades and nuances of the experience of fear. (by the way if
this bothers you, you should know that there are an equal number of
terms for joy and celebration). So, two of these terms for fear figure
prominently in the Hebrew Bible and in the high holy day prayerbook, and
while they sometimes seem to be used interchangeably, many scholars have
argued that they actually represent two very different emotional
modalities.
One of these terms is formed by the root letters, peh, chet and
dalet which spell pachad and the other by the letters
yud, reysh aleph which spell yirah. In many analyses of the
meanings of these two terms, pachad is understood as referring to
something which is best translated as mortal fear or dread, while
yirah is most often construed to be closer to English words such as
Awe or Reverence or even wonder. The difference between these two ranges
of meaning is profound. Pachad is the fear that arises in reaction to or
anticipation of a real or imagined threat, and operates without any
involvement from our rational faculties.
This particular nuance is derived from the final two letters of the root
which together spell the word chad, meaning something sharp.
Yirah on the other hand is closely related to the Hebrew word for visual
perception, ra’ah.
Thus the experience of Yirah is very much a rational one, since it
involves perceiving and processing the meaning of a truth which thrusts
itself upon us in a clear and undeniable way. There is no sense of
direct threat to one’s life or person involved with yirah, but there is
a sense of confronting a reality that underscores our own smallness and
vulnerability against the backdrop of a universe containing beauty and
mystery beyond measure.
While both of these terms and their correlated emotional states come up
over the course of high holy day cycle, the nature of their relationship
to each other is disputed by various authorities.
Some strands of our tradition have seen these two types of fear as being
over-lapping and mutually reinforcing; from such a perspective it is
considered desirable to cultivate both pachad and yirah in our
experience of God. In other words, this approach argues that we should
try to experience both awe in response to Divine majesty as well as the
terror of realizing that the security of our particular lives is
completely out of our own hands and as Jewish tradition would say,
completely within God’s. The more we have of one type of fear, says this
perspective, the easier it will be to accumulate the other, and the Days
of Awe is a good time to work on both.
But there are other views which see pachad and yirah as being very much
in tension with one another. In this approach, pachad is present in our
lives all of the time to a greater extent than it should be, for
example, anytime we recoil from the prospect of loss, failure, pain and
certainly the notion of our own mortality.
From this point of view, the Days of Awe is a time to strengthen our
sense of Yirah in order to mitigate the negative effects that the
constant presence of pachad has on us. One text that concisely captures
this opposition between pachad and yirah comes to us in the form of a
popular Hebrew folk song whose lyrics are rooted in the teaching of one
of Hasidism’s early masters, Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav.
Rebbe Nachman was the great grandson of the Ba’al Shem Tov, and himself
the founder of a Hasidic dynasty which continues to thrive today called,
not surprisingly, the Bratzlaver Hasidim. The words in Hebrew, which are
a paraphrase of the original, go as follows: Kol Ha Olam Kulo, Gesher
Tzar Me’od, Ve Ha Ikar lo Lefachaid Klal. A fairly un-poetic translation
might render this into English as "The world in its entirety is really a
very narrow bridge and the main thing is not to be afraid."
Notwithstanding the fact that we sing this song fairly frequently at Kol
HaLev events, I wonder how often we have stepped back to reflect on what
the meaning of its words might be for us and how we should relate to
them.
How do pachad and yirah fit into this short but profound melody? The
first part, which compares our world to a very narrow bridge, has an
edge that reminds us of certain sections of the High Holy Day prayer
book. It points to a truth that all of our own lives and the lives of
those whom we love and treasure are inherently, tragically and
beautifully fragile. But then up comes the second part urging us not to
go the route of pachad, not to fall into mortal fear and dread of all
the painful situations that can befall us in this very vulnerable
situation. This is a classic paradox. I can imagine us arguing with
Rebbe Nachman and saying if you really don’t want us to be afraid,
please drop all that narrow bridge stuff. But then I imagine he might
give us a knowing smile and ask us, do you expect to escape your fear
simply by pretending that you are not on a narrow bridge?
That is after all how most of us live most of the time, by pretending or
denying that we are vulnerable. We look to our careers, our families,
our finances, and any number of other areas of our lives to invest our
time, energy and attention. But this route to dealing with our fear does
not work in the long run and sometimes not even in the short run.
For one thing, even while we are consciously engaged in the business of
our lives, our fear, our pachad continues to act upon us in
sub-conscious ways. Another problem with this approach to life is that
if we encounter a significant loss of any kind, it may pull the rug
completely out from under us.
And perhaps the most significant problem with this path, is that when we
are in the grip of denial or distraction from the truth of our human
condition, we are in no position to see clearly what our highest
priorities are. And we may, as a result, make choices that bring pain
and suffering into our lives without even being able to blame the slings
and arrows of outrageous fortune.
But what then is the alternative to living our lives in this way? It is
the way of the narrow bridge. It is the way of Yirah. When we see the
truth of our condition, that we are mortal and fragile and limited, we
have the capacity to pass through the dread of pachad and we find
ourselves brought very powerfully into the present moment. This is Yirah
when we are present to the gift that each moment and each breath
embodies. Cultivating this awareness is the only true antidote to living
in the kind of fear that pachad represents. And these days of Awe, these
days of Yirah are well suited to helping us to stand on the narrow
bridge with our eyes and our hearts open.
This perspective does not develop without work on our part. We live
within a culture that has both an unhealthy obsession with pachad as
well as a complete aversion to it. It is a kind of addiction in which we
are served up large doses of pachad type fear and then provided with all
kinds of opportunities to distract ourselves from it, but the end result
of this is that pachad becomes evermore enmeshed within our lives.
Fear and Awe though seemingly very similar to one another are in fact
diametrical opposites when looked at through a spiritual lens. Awe is
redemptive, fear is enslaving. Awe is life oriented, fear moves us
toward death. Gesher Tzar me’od is the key to unlocking this paradox.
Let us resolve in the coming year, to nurture those moments in our lives
when we notice the narrow bridge, but can do so without fear.
Shannah tovah umutkah!
Rabbi Steve |