A few weeks ago, as the city of Los Angeles prepared for Halloween, I noticed that the word “fear” was popping up everywhere. “Fear, Fright and Fun Festival!” said one billboard. “Have no Fear – Fall is here!” said another. “Fear what lives in your kitchen sponges,” a commercial warned me. And who can forget the ubiquitous advertisements for political candidates and propositions in the weeks leading up to the election: dozens of tidy little packages of fear.
Seemingly out of nowhere, fear was in the spotlight. And as the weather got colder and the days shorter, fear really was creeping in everywhere – including my relationship with my kitchen sponges.
The truth is, many of us have different reactions to the word fear. For some, the element of fear is… well, scary. For others, fear is a challenge one can easily overcome. Some people are crippled by their fears; others are emboldened by them. And whatever one’s relationship is to fear itself, the way fear manifests in our daily lives can often be the determining factor in how successful we consider ourselves to be.
There are so many meanings for the word “fear.” It can mean something completely different to me as it does to you. The universal fears – fear of failure, losing someone close to us, getting sick, losing our jobs – those fears are ones with which many of us are familiar. But other fears – fear that our lives won’t turn out the way we want them to, fear of not living up to our potential, fear of losing our resilience – those struggles are just as prevalent, and just as tough.
We try so hard to eliminate our fears, face our fears, and stop living in fear. We listen to teachers, self-help gurus and student rabbis who encourage us to face our fears so as not to be afraid of them any longer. We enlist the help of friends and relatives and verses of Torah to help us get past the elements of life which scare us. We try to get rid of that which frightens us; to overcome and extinguish our lives of fear.
So often, we look at fear as a bad thing. Yet tonight, I would like to argue that fear – a healthy dose of it – can actually be good.
About a decade ago, I went through the rite of passage known as Driver’s Education. Just a few weeks after turning fifteen, I enrolled in classes and spent the entirety of spring break collecting the hours I needed for my learner’s permit. I was so excited – I literally could not wait to drive. Watching movies about horrific accidents and driver’s safety couldn’t faze me – I was determined. I was ready. It was time.
I got my permit, I did my hours, and then a week before my sixteenth birthday, something magical happened: I was rear-ended at a yield sign about two miles from my parents’ house.
At the time, I didn’t think it was so magical. Actually, it was awful. Though the accident was clearly not my fault, and my mother – who had been sitting in the passenger seat – reassured me the car would be fixed, I was hysterical. I was so thrown, so freaked out that I decided then and there I no longer wanted my license.
Up until that point I considered myself a perfect driver. But the reality that even perfect drivers get in accidents filled me with such fear about driving; I never wanted to get behind the wheel again.
That little fender-bender provided my parents an opportunity. Later that evening they sat me down for an honest conversation. In that talk, they chose not to reassure me or convince me to become more confident about my driving. Instead, they chose to harness my own fear and use it to their advantage. They taught me to take my fear and never let it go – to carry that element with me every single time I buckled my seat belt.
They instilled in me a healthy dose of fear – and it has stuck with me ever since, carrying me through ten mostly successful years of navigating California’s roads.
Having a little bit of fear can sometimes help us be better at whatever it is we choose to do.
For the past several weeks, our Torah has chronicled the adventures of our patriarchs. No strangers to the element of fear, Abraham, particularly Isaac, and now Jacob have each wrestled with their respective fears and personal demons throughout the book of Genesis.
In last week’s Torah portion, Tol’dot, Jacob receives the blessing of his father Isaac, wrestling it from the hands of his twin brother Esau. For Jacob, fear is prevalent throughout this parsha: fear of not receiving the blessing of his ailing father, fear of letting down his mother Rebecca, fear of being anything less than the patriarch he is destined to become. Yet his deception – and the anger he evokes in Esau – causes Jacob to fear his brother and flee Beer-Sheva. We begin this week’s parsha witnesses to Jacob’s journey.
Vayetzei opens with Jacob’s dream: that a ladder was set onto the ground, its top reaching toward the sky. And on that ladder were malachei elohim – angels of God. As Jacob dreams, God appears to him, saying: “I am the Lord, the God of your fathers. The ground on which you are lying I will assign to you and your offspring. Remember, I am with you: I will protect you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land.”
Jacob wakes, shaken, and exclaims: “ma norah ha makom hazeh – how awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God.”
One would think that, after having this kind of theophany Jacob would be filled with excitement, radiance, joy. Yet the biblical text uses a very specific word to describe Jacob’s emotional state as he proclaims these words – yirah.
How many of you have heard the word yirah before? Its root – reish aleph hey – is the same one as “to see,” ro’eh. It encompasses the emotions of awe, reverence, terror, and dread. Yirah is an emotional state of being most commonly experienced in the presence of God. Yet its primary definition is fear – and it is the fear Jacob experiences which causes him to proclaim his wonder and name the place Beth-El – the house of God.
In this holy encounter between Jacob and God, it is his yirah – his fear – which propels him forward. Forward to the house of Laban, where he meets his love Rachel and marries both her and Leah. Forward towards his eventual chance meeting with an angel and subsequent reconciliation with Esau. Forward to become the progenitor of twelve sons, the twelve tribes of Israel.
In this Torah portion we see clearly how a healthy dose of fear – yirah – can actually be a good thing.
Rabbi Ari Margolis presented his senior thesis on yirah in the biblical text. As he lays out the different levels of yirah found in the 16th century book Orchot Tzaddikim, he states: “Yirah is related to fearing God but focuses on the individual. At the highest level, yirah is when one’s whole being is filled with an awareness and appreciation for God’s greatness.”
Rachel Farbiarz, a writer and Torah commentator for American Jewish World Service’s Dvar Tzedek, writes the following: “Too often, fear can translate into a reflexive focus inward, a preoccupation with our own needs to the exclusion of others. Fear is like that. It fixes one in place; limit’s one’s world and constricts one’s scope of vision. But, we need not be beholden to fear. And from our patriarch, we know that fear – even in moments of vulnerability – can be transformed into a kind of power.”
Fear has a tendency to lock us in and prevent us from living our lives to the fullest. Yet fear also has the ability to transform us – to open us up to possibility and promise.
Every day I witness the power of yirah. I witness yirah in myself as I wrestle with biblical texts that challenge and enlighten me. I witness yirah in others when I see them engaged in the electoral process – when their fear and respect for their government propels them to vote. I witness yirah when I counsel my engaged friends on what it means to have a Jewish wedding; to fear and revere the institution of marriage.
We witness yirah every day: when we lie down and when we rise up: in our homes, in our communities, on the news, and in our world. When we see the tenacity of those fighting for democracy under the harshest conditions possible on the other side of the planet. When we read about our brethren struggling for religious tolerance and pluralism: for the right to worship and revere God their way.
We witness yirah when the earth moves beneath us; when the ground shakes and trembles and leaves our homes shattered – or destroyed.
Yet these moments of yirah – fear and awe – these moments have the power to make us stronger. They have the potential to strengthen our resilience, test our resolve. And rather than eliminate or avoid fear together, I argue it is how we utilize our fear which ultimately determines how we move forward; how we progress to achieve whatever it is we set out to achieve.
I implore each of us tonight to consider and weigh our fears; those things that enter our lives, threaten our happiness, uproot our security, and plague us with doubt. Which of those fears can we transform into good? How can reconstructing our own approach to fear help us, help others, or help our community? How can we harness the power of yirah for good?
Jacob wakes from his dream to rename the site of his vision Beth El – the House of God. Historically speaking, Beth El sat on the border between Judah and Israel. It was the gateway between two states; a junction between two separate entities.
I pray that when we stand at our own gateway – our personal Beth El – we seize the yirah we feel; the fear, awe, and reverence. Let us learn to embrace the fear, forever pushing forward toward our unlimited potential.
Shabbat Shalom. And drive safe.
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