12. And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13. To keep the commandments of the Lord, and his statutes, which I command you this day for your good? (Deut 10:12-13)
What is this thing we call the fear of God? A lot of people call themselves “God fearing,” but what does that mean? In a patriarchal sense it may mean we believe in a God who is ready to mete out punishment. Yet at the same time we read in the Shema to love God, with all our heart soul and might. Deuteronomy 10:12 here paradoxically tells us we are to both fear and love God. How do you do both?
As students of Hebrew will tell you the word in Hebrew for fear, yarei’ also means awe. As beginning students of Hebrew will also tell you, they often get the word for fear mixed up with the word for seeing, ra’ah. The reason is grammatical. Hebrew most often uses a three letter root as the basis for a verb. Verb conjugation is the addition of letters to this three letter root. There are problems with this system, however, as some three-letter roots use consonants that are considered weak, either due to their use as a semi vowel like vav (v or w) or like yud (y). Another reason a word could be weak is that it contains a guttural sound, some of which are so un-pronounceable they have become silent letters like the aleph and ayin, or close to silent like the hay(h). For the purpose of Verb conjugation, the roots of Yarei (YRA) and ra’ah (RAH) are doubly weak, the reish being the only letter that can stand on its own in any conjugation, so words tend to get confused for letters disappearing in the conjugation. Add to that the letter yud (Y) is used for the future tense and things get confusing fast.
Such confusion has led some language theorists to believe there was a proto-Hebrew with a two letter system. Many of these semi vowels and weak gutturals which present problems pronouncing were themselves modifiers of the biliteral root. This allows for a certain amount of word play. Rabbi Akiba once quipped an interesting lesson on marriage doing this. The word for man in Hebrew is spelled Aleph-Yud-Shin (ish) and woman Aleph-Shin-Hay (ishah). If one were to remove God (Y and H as a god name) from the relationship, all that is left is fire Aleph-Shin (aish).
Last night, I had an odd thought staring off into space towards a painting I did of Akiba’s commentary. I realized that Y and H surround the root Reish-Aleph in the words fear/awe and see. Is there a connection there?
I believe there is. We read in Proverbs:
5. A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain to wise counsels; 6. To understand a proverb, and a figure; the words of the wise, and their riddles. 7. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; but fools despise wisdom and instruction. [Proverbs 1]
8. Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate you; rebuke a wise man, and he will love you. 9. Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser; teach a just man, and he will increase in learning. 10. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; and the knowledge of holy matters is understanding. [Proverbs 9]
Proverbs also tells us about scorners:
24. The proud and haughty, scorner is his name, acts in arrogant wrath. [Proverbs 23]
To learn we must perceive, we must see what the world is like. There are two ways of learning: One where we continue to support our own conclusions by finding new evidence that we are right and one where we delve into the unknown. One requires arrogance, one requires humility. IN the first of many paradoxes we must learn, whoever looks at the world and realizes how small he really is and how little he really knows is the wise one, a deep sense of humility about learning. The beginning of such wisdom is the fear of the Lord, knowing how great and vast God is compared to us, looking at the world and seeing more than can ever be explained rationally.
We can learn from God, and God is always teaching us, and telling us the path to walk. Is the phrase to “walk in his ways” different than “to keep his commandments?” I think so. One might think it is the difference between mitzvot and ethics, as did the early Reform Movement. Yet I think it is two aspects of God reflecting on ourselves. There is the God who personally and directly, yet subtly affects each of our lives every day, telling us how to live our lives in subtle ways. There is also the God who is far away and has left us a set of rules to follow with our free will for all time. God is so vast, infinite and omnipotent that both are true simultaneously. The scorner can only arrogantly believe his one model to be true and never understands this. To realize how terribly little one knows is a terrifying thought. Hence the Fear and the Awe, a fear so great the scorner scorns it, replacing God with his neat little illusion of a world.
Models are never the same as a real thing. A plastic model airplane of a 747 might look like a real airplane, but it will not fly. Another model airplane such as a cheap balsawood model might fly, but look nothing like a real passenger jet. Both are too small for human passengers. Like the passengers on a model airplane, for the scorner there is one thing they always leave out of the details of their models, because that too is rather scary: Ahavat Hashem, the love of God. They might intellectualize it, but they’ll avoid feeling it, for to feel it is to do the other thing true lovers do: love back equally. Such a love of God takes many forms from a deep emotionally spiritual state to our adherence to the mitzvot as love notes to God. For one who has a view of the world with limits and boundaries, such a world must be frightening. Even to the wise such a world is frightening, but in the acknowledgment of not knowing and the joy of learning, the wise embraces instead of rejecting the Divine, with all his heart, soul and might.
When one clings to God with Ahavat Hashem, the world changes and the hand of God is everywhere, Message abound in signs found in the everyday. A red flower on a billboard might contain a message about your future. A random song on the radio or a bird might help you with a decision. A freak thunderstorm might be trying to tell you something. They, as is every human being, plant animal and rock are part of God. As such the hand of an infinite, transcendent, yet personal God in way we cannot comprehend plays out messages to us in our lives, maybe in dreams events and omens. All we need to do is trust and love God, then observe. They will be there.
I spent ten years of my life as a “scorner,” or so I thought. It turns out the opposite was true. I went east into Taoism and Zen because my Ahavat Hashem could not be fulfilled by an institutional Judaism which was more about rules than Ahavat Hashem. I was told what Yirat HaShem, the fear of God was by teachers and Rabbis, and it was a very limited model based not on Divine existence but the most childish form of human experience: a parent scolding a naughty child. Yet in returning I have learned that Yirat Hashem is the beginning of wisdom, realizing how awesome God is and how much I have yet to learn, more than I ever will. In that knowledge is Yirat Hashem and Ahavat Hashem, for they really are the same thing.
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