Are we truly afraid any more?

Fear (יִרְאָה, yirah) is a theme that runs through Pirkei Avot. We meet it first at Avot 1:3, where Antigonos Ish Socho counsels:

וִיהִי מוֹרָא שָׁמַֽיִם עֲלֵיכֶם

And let the fear of Heaven be upon you.

At Avot 2:11 the highest accolade that Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai can give to one of his leading talmidim. Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel, is to describe him as a יְרֵא חֵטְא (“a fearer of sin”). In the baraitot at the end of the tractate, to be בְּיִרְאָה (“in a state of fear”) is one of the 48 modes by which one acquires Torah—and there are other references to fear. But what does the word mean, both inherently and to us now?

Our sages have had much to say about fear. They have taught us to distinguish between fear of punishment, fear of actually doing wrong and the sort of fear one experiences (which we probably equate with awe) when in the presence of something so great that we simply can’t take it in, something that, we intuitively feel, substantiates our belief in God’s role as Creator of the world or His immanent presence. When used by our Sages, the word yirah, in one context or another, seems to span a vast range of human emotions: at one extreme it is a deep sense of terror while, at the other, it is more like a profound form of respect.

What I want to ask here is not what yirah means but whether we really feel it the same way as the early audience of Avot students would have done. This question is sparked off by a comment made by Rabbi Yisroel Miller, The Wisdom of Avos, on Avot 2:1—a mishnah that doesn’t even contain the word yirah. He writes:

“[I] believe without question that on Rosh Hashanah my life hangs in the balance as Hashem decides my fate for the coming year, and yet I do not tremble as much as I did when a policeman once pulled me over for a traffic violation!”

I suspect that this honest personal admission by a respected orthodox rabbi reflects the experiences of many, if not most, of us today. If we truly felt that God was with us and watching us all the time, and genuinely felt that He rewards us for our good deeds and punishes us for our bad ones, our personal experience of fear would no doubt be greatly enhanced.  As it is, in our busy lives we find times to tune in to God’s supervision, for example at times of prayer or when we are preparing to perform a mitzvah, and times when, like a divine App, we do not turn Him off but leave Him running quietly in the background.

This leads to another question: what is the role of fear in our lives today? Is it to be reserved for threats to our physical and economic well-being, leaving us to rely on the censure of our fellow humans and peer pressure instead? And have we really forgotten how to fear?

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Joy and fear: can you feel both at the same time?

In his commentary on Avot 5:19, Maharam Shik throws in a discussion point that is not directly related to that mishnah at all, but which he considers important. He writes:

“Fear and joy are two conflicting feelings and, in a place where either dominates, there is no room for the other”.

Since he has made the same point on earlier occasions, the previous one being on Avot 4:24 (the context being Shmuel HaKatan’s caution not to express joy at the downfall of one’s enemy), this is clearly something that troubles him.

While neither joy nor fear are mentioned in Avot 5:19, both feature on numerous occasions elsewhere in the tractate. For those who love lists of references, joy can be found at Avot 4:1, 4:24, 6:1 and 6:6, while fear appears in Avot 2:11, 3:3 and 3:7, 3:11, 3:21.

The fact that joy and fear do not appear together in any of these teachings might tempt us to conclude, as Maharam Shik has done, that they are mutually exclusive: if you feel the one, you cannot in his view be feeling the other. But is this reasoning borne out by our own experiences as human beings? I do not think so.

After a gap of several decades, I can still clearly recall my feelings when I exited Dublin’s Holles Street Maternity Hospital with my firstborn child in my arms. I was literally shaking with sheer joy that here before my very eyes was the baby my wife and I had fervently wished for, coupled with a deep fear that I had just exchanged my comfort area for an adventure in parenthood for which I had no experience or training and in which, I felt, I was way out of my depth. I’m sure that many readers of this post may have comparable mixed-feeling sensations of being torn between the powerful emotions of joy and fear.

As a final point, I add that our feelings are given to us for a purpose: to serve as a reality check. Joy, fear, anger, love, hate, despondency and indifference are part of the emotional armory of every human. We do not need to look to verses from Tanach or to scholarly disquisitions in order to ascertain whether two or more emotions can be felt together. All we need do is look within ourselves.

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What applies to love applies equally to hate -- and maybe also to fear

The mishnah at Avot 5:19 begins with the words:

Any love that depends on a specific thing, if that thing is lost, to too is that love; and if it doesn’t depend on anything, it is never lost.

In “Hate: Curable and Incurable”, Covenant and Conversation: Deuteronomy, Renewal of the Sinai Covenant, 2019) Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks opens the possibilities contained in these few words by arguing persuasively that this proposition does not apply to love alone. It also applies to hate. In doing so, it explains an apparent anomaly in the Torah’s commands. This anomaly relates to how the Children of Israel should view the Egyptians, who had enslaved, oppressed and exploited them for centuries, even attempting genocide, and the Amalekites, who attacked them just once in the desert. 

The Torah commands that we are not to hate the Egyptians (Deuteronomy 23:8). We are however obliged to maintain perpetual hostility against the Amalekites (Exodus 17:16), even though we suffered far more at the hands of the Egyptians. Why should this be? 

An explanation is offered that, while both the Egyptians and the Amalekites hated the Children of Israel, the Egyptians had some reason for doing so: they saw this strong and increasingly populous alien tribe within their borders as a threat to their security (Exodus 1:19-20).  This reason might have been irrational and unfounded, but it was genuinely held. Once this alien tribe had departed, the reason for the Egyptians’ hatred departed too and, with it, the hatred itself. The hatred of Amalek however had no cause. A hatred that has no cause is a hatred that has no end.

It is worth considering whether this argument can be applied not only to hatred but to another word that is regularly contrasted with love: fear. Prima facie, the answer is yes, or at least it should be. If there is a reason why a person is afraid of anything—be it a dog, the dark, an unwelcome event, or another person—it is possible to address the cause of that fear. But where a fear is not conditioned upon anything it all and is quite irrational, it may never be possible to eradicate it. 

Respect for rabbis and teachers: how does this apply today

Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua says, “Let the honour of your student be as dear to you as your own; and the honour of your friend should be like fear of your teacher—and fear of your teacher should be like fear of Heaven” (Avot 4:15).  We don't usually fear our teachers these days, but the Hebrew word translated here as "fear" can also mean a deep and sincerely felt respect.  On this basis the mishnah speaks of something that comes rather closer to our own experiences.

Classic Roman Vishniac
photo from pre-War Poland,
when rabbis really could
instill fear

Here's a thought about how we respect some of our principal Jewish teachers, our communal rabbis.

It seems to me that, at least since the 1960s and the dawn of the teshuvah movement, one can divide Jewish communities into three broad categories.  

The first consists of communities which are far from the epicentre of Jewish life, either in geographical or spiritual terms, and where the level of knowledge and commitment to learning within that community is relatively modest.  

The second consists of communities where the average standard of attainment in terms of religious knowledge and practice is quite considerable, and where its members have the confidence and the capability to participate actively in synagogue services and learning programmes.  

The third is made up of communities where the level of knowledge and commitment is extremely high, and where the majority of congregants may well be rabbis themselves or have spent several years in full-time Torah learning before entering a profession, business or trade.

In the first category, respect for the rabbi is likely to be high since he possesses a suite of talents that may not be replicated to any great extent within his community. These might include the ability to read unpunctuated and vowel-less Hebrew and Aramaic text fluently, knowledge of how to officiate at weddings, funerals, a broad range of pastoral skills, and the like.  

In the third group too, respect for the rabbi is likely to be high since the congregants, who likely share the rabbi’s linguistic and learning skills, are in a position to appreciate its quality and know how much time and effort he would have had to expend in order to acquire them.  

In the middle category, however, it seems to me that the rabbi is likely to receive less respect.  This is because his congregants may have enough knowledge, learning and commitment to be able to challenge his rulings and test his learning, but may lack sufficient patience, willingness or understanding to enable them to accept his decisions and appreciate his answers. Here, superimposed upon the rabbi-congregation relationship, is something that is almost akin to sibling rivalry: he is a sort of older brother, entitled to respect and often genuinely loved, but generally vulnerable to challenge and sometimes taken for granted. It is within this middle ground, therefore, that the practical challenge of respecting the rabbi is put to the greatest test.

Comments, anyone?

Types of fear, Daniel Deronda and fear of oneself

Daniel Deronda comes face to face with
the prospect that he may be Jewish in the
BBC adaptation of George Eliot's novel

Fear-related themes are frequently discussed in Pirkei Avot. We learn there of fear of Heaven (1:3) and fear of sin (2:11, 3:11), as well as other types of fear the exact nature of which we must infer from the context in which the mishnah uses the word. For example, we find two references to the relationship between fear and wisdom: (i) "If there is no wisdom, there is no fear -- and if there is no fear there is no wisdom" (3:21) and (ii) fear is listed among the 48 things one needs in order to acquire Torah wisdom (6:6).

Fear of oneself and of the inability to control the power of one’s ego are central themes of George Eliot’s novel of the rediscovery of Jewish identity Daniel Deronda (1876), which opens with the line “Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul”. It is possible to go through the references to fear in Pirkei Avot and see how far they apply to self-fear of this nature.

Does any reader know of any writings of traditional Jewish Sages or modern commentators that tackle the concept of self-fear, either as it applies to Avot or in general? If so, do please get in touch and let me know.