There is a very powerful teaching from Rabbi Berezovsky, the last Slonimer rebbe who passed away 26 years ago. In this teaching the Slonimer, focused on a verse from our parsha; “And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all God’s ways, and to love the Source.’’ Deuteronomy 10:12
What is this this fear yirah, God demands from us? At first glance this seems a little strange, maybe even troubling, is the verse stating that one must fear God before one can love God, and by extension, since we are all in the image of the Divine, does this mean we can only love one another if we fear each other? Many of our sources at first glance seem to suggest this. In the Zohar it states that, “a person who has fear of God does not lack anything.” Additionally in the book of Proverbs, the author informs us that “the fear yirah ” of the Lord sustains life.”
The Slonimer, expounding on these two verses speaks of a yirah that preceded creation. So important is this yirah that one cannot be in a state of devekut, closeness to divine without it! For the Slonimer the quality midah of yirah, was crucially important to a person’s spiritual development, for only when one embodies yirah can a person have the capacity for love. This is difficult for many of us. Those of us who don’t necessarily believe in the kind of God that demands to be feared have problems with this notion of yirah, and, if I want to cleave to the source of all creation, if I want to praise the creative force in the universe that manifests all the diversity, all the beauty the elegance and even all the suffering, do I want to do so from a place of fear?
There is a kind of yirah though, that Hassidic masters refer to as yirat adonai la chayim – a fear that sustains life, that is considered to be a very deep form of connection with to the divine. It is not a yirah that is coterminous with the word pachad, a fear that brings with it anxiety, depression terror. It is closer to the meaning of the word temiha, astonishment, wonder, marvel. We have all experienced moments of yirat adonai la chayim. It is a feeling that inspires awe in the very core of our being as we are overwhelmed by the magnitude and mystery of existence.
We have all had these moments, they serve as what Emanuel Levinas, an important French Jewish philosopher called an interruption. These moments break through the regular, ordinary experience of existence and shatter our world, if only for a few brief moments.
I remember one such experience when I traveled to India. I arrived at a little town in the foothills of the Himalayas. It was late at night and there were no street lamps or lights of any sought. I sat in a field and looked up at a sky full of stars. And then it happened to me, for a little longer than a moment that felt like an eternity, time stopped, there was no separation between me and all of creation, I understood intuitively that I was made from the same stuff as the stars, the sky the earth under my feet, it was a very deep knowing, a deep feeling of interconnectedness, a kind of breakthrough, an interruption. My concerns, worries, anxieties all ceased for that time. Something very important was gained by that experience and it changed me, it led to a realization that there was some inexplicable force clearly greater than me but also beyond all phenomena, that encompassed me and all things, it was a force that we were all a part of, all connected to.
Yirat adonai la chaim is an awakening, and, to be sure there is a requisite amount of “fear and trembling” that accompanies these moments of interruption. Yirat adonai la chayim; I cannot hold on to anything that I ultimately can rationally understand!! The ground could fall out from under my feet at any moment!!My whole existence is dependent on the creative force in our universe that is constantly creating, renewing, birthing, destroying endlessly and I will never really comprehend it. It is a terrifying thought, we are not in control, but this yirah is not ultimately one that creates anxiety, hopelessness and depression, even if we have to pass through these stages first, it is a yirah that has the potential to trigger a deep gnosis, an intuitive knowledge of spiritual truths.
In this post Copernican universe we inhabit, we might feel very small, our lives inconsequential. However, despite the last five hundred years of Copernican reality check, when one contemplates the incredible forces that have had to be in a very specific alignment to allow our planet to sustain life, it is a true miracle of the highest order. We take this miracle for granted as a result of not embodying yirat adonai la chayim, a sense of radical amazement.
‘And now Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you.’ If we are to be Israel. If we are striving to be people who struggle with the mystery of life and are transformed by that struggle, we have to pass through the experience of yirat adonai la chayim. It is absolutely essential because this sense of wonder awakens us to the pulsating miracle of life, a miracle that is constantly unfolding. Like a caterpillar that transforms into a butterfly in all its resplendence, yirat adonai la chayim embodied and cocooned in our hearts emerges as ahavah and we become lovers.
“And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all God’s ways, and to love the Source.”
What then is the pilgrimage of the heart the above verse alludes to? It is the journey from a yirah that is pachad, a fear, that is anxiety based, the trembling of an insecure ego, to a yirah that is temiha an overwhelming sense of awe that inspires radical amazement. yirat adonai la chayim.
May we all be blessed to cultivate a sense of yirah that shakes the very core of our being and inspires a sense of wonder and amazement as we journey together from this moment to the abode of the beloved and the Days of Awe.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi George Mordecai