Question 7: Fear or Awe? (Kol Nidre 5784/2023)

Shanah tovah! Here’s another of my High Holy Day sermons.

May you have a happy, healthy new year.

It was early morning on Rosh Hodesh, the first day of the new month. I had woken up at 6AM to travel with a number of my fellow rabbinical students to the Kotel— the Western Wall— to take part in a service organized by Women of the Wall. For those who aren’t familiar, Women of the Wall is an organization working to further access to the Kotel, which, under control of the Israeli Rabbanut, restricts the ways that women and many nonbinary and trans people can access the holy ground. 

When a Jewish man goes to the Kotel he can wear a kippah, tallit, and tefillin and, if he does not have these things, other men will likely offer them to him. He may pray quietly on his own or aloud in a minyan. And he may read from Torah— which is easy, since there are approximately 300 Torah scrolls on the men’s side.

On the women’s side of the wall, Torah scrolls, tallitot, and any form of collective prayer are forbidden. Appropriately clothed women are welcome to approach the wall for individual prayer, but in accordance with conservative interpretations of halakha, Jewish law, they cannot organize a minyan. 

So, every Rosh Hodesh, Women of the Wall organizes a service in defiance of these laws. And, every Rosh Hodesh, protestors who agree with the Rabbanut gather in an attempt to disrupt the service. Most months, the protests are annoying but manageable. That month, however, was different, because that month, we approached the women’s side of the wall with Torah scrolls for the very first time. 

As we prayed, protestors, mostly ultra-Orthodox Israelis bussed in from the settlements, ran around screaming and calling us nazis. Little boys young enough to be on the women’s side of the wall blew whistles to drown out our singing and tried to pull our tallitot and tefillin off of our bodies. That was all, unfortunately, par for the course. But then I saw a protestor– not a child this time but a grown man—rushing a supporter of Women of the Wall who was carrying a Torah, trying to knock him, and, by extension, one of our shared faith’s most precious objects, to the harsh Jerusalem stone. 

As a community, the Women of the Wall contingent realized that to get the sacred scrolls safely out of the Kotel plaza, we would need to risk our bodies. And so we locked arms with one another, and, forming lines, stood between those holding the Torahs and those seeking to take them. I could hear my heart thumping in my ears. I knew that if these protestors were willing to risk harm to a Torah, they were certainly willing to risk harm to their fellow Jew. Fear coursed through me. 

Dr. Brené Brown writes in her book Atlas of the Heart that “Fear is a negative, short-lasting, high-alert emotion in response to a perceived threat… [It] arises when we need to respond quickly to physical or psychological danger that is present and imminent. Because fear is a rapid-fire emotion, the physiological reaction can sometimes occur before we even realize that we are afraid.” 

In that moment at the Kotel, locking arms with my colleagues, I had a particular physiological response to my fear. I got hyper alert and hyper calm at the same moment. I felt energy radiating from my heart out into my shoulders and down to my fingers. I felt my breath deepening, and, somehow, I felt afraid and fully present at the same moment. And my fear felt holy. 

Tomorrow, we’ll chant chapter 16 of Leviticus, which begins, “וַיְדַבֵּ֤ר ה׳ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה אַחֲרֵ֣י מ֔וֹת שְׁנֵ֖י בְּנֵ֣י אַהֲרֹ֑ן בְּקׇרְבָתָ֥ם לִפְנֵי־ה׳ וַיָּמֻֽתוּ׃– God spoke to Moshe  after the death of the two sons of Aharon,  when they came-near before the presence of God and died.” This is a verse we often gloss over on our way to the story of the scapegoat — the recipient of the people’s collective sins sent off to die in the wilderness. And tomorrow we will indeed speak more about goats. But tonight I’m thinking of the man in charge of the sacrifices: Aaron, the high priest. Aaron, honored and burdened with ritual care for the entire Israelite community. And Aaron, the mourning father. 

Many of us may be familiar with the story of Nadav and Abihu, Aaron’s oldest two sons, who 6 chapters and several months before Yom Kippur present strange fire— esh zarah— to God. As punishment, they are consumed by divine flame. Following this terrible incident, Aaron’s surviving two sons Elazar and Itamar also unintentionally misstep and find themselves incurring Moses’s wrath. Before they face a similar fate to their brothers, Aaron intercedes, Moses relents, and for the next 5 chapters family drama is set aside in favor of discussion of kashrut, spiritual afflictions and bodily emissions.

 And then comes chapter 16, when Aaron is instructed on how exactly to enter the Holy of Holies and effect atonement for himself and for the entire people. It’s not a simple procedure, and if Aaron doesn’t do it properly, he’ll die. The Zohar even says that the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies with a rope of gold tied around his ankle so that, in the event of his death, his body could be retrieved from the inner sanctum by pulling the rope. 

Aaron must enter the Holy of Holies with animals for offering. He must garb himself in the linen priestly garments, after washing of course. He must place the lots on two goats— designating one for sacrifice and one for scapegoating. After that, the slaughter will begin, with intricate splattering of blood on the altar and burning of particular organs. Aaron must do it all properly, and he must do it all alone. Even his fellow priests aren’t welcome to enter the holy of holies with him. And, at the end of the chapter, we learn that one of his two surviving sons must inherit his responsibilities after he dies, as the future high priest shall be “he whose hand has been filled to act-as-priest in place of his father.” So here’s Aaron on the very first Yom Kippur, a mourning father of two surviving sons whom he surely would do anything not to lose, and a priest weighed down by the responsibility of effecting atonement for the entire Israelite community. He has much reason to be afraid. 

Most of the time in our society, we’re encouraged not to be fearful, or at least not to let our fear dictate how we live our lives. We take our fear to therapy, if we’re so lucky, or to our closest friends and family, or, well, to our rabbis. But even in the midst of the last 3 years, surrounded by a pandemic with seemingly endless death in its wake, we weren’t really supposed to be afraid. We were supposed to be strong, to be appropriately somber at appropriate moments, and also to be creative and generous and to make the most of the challenges of the time. 

But we were scared. Even if we were also strong, and somber, and creative, and generous, and able to make the most of the challenges of the moment, we were scared. And COVID is far from the only thing we’ve had to fear in recent years. From political unrest to ever-increasing climate change disaster, from the risk of nuclear war to the plague of gun violence, from the banning of Maüs in public schools to the barring of Drag from public spaces in Florida, from the denigration of democracy in Israel to the rise of antisemitism around the world, this is a frightening time. 

In the Jewish community, we’ve struggled with the  uptick in antisemitism infiltrating spaces from social media platforms to governor’s offices to the streets of Brooklyn. This rise, emboldened by years of political acquiescence, is certainly fear worthy. As recently as Rosh Hashanah, a former president wrote on social media that liberal Jews voted to destroy the United States and Israel. Bomb threats have been called in to synagogues around the country and abroad.  I imagine that there are those among us who were nervous to come to services today for fear that a threat could follow. And yet, we’re all here. And I’m grateful. 

There is a holiness in being afraid and living fully anyway. This is not the same thing as throwing caution to the wind. Rather it’s about naming our fear— not shying away from it or trying to tell it it doesn’t exist— and making choices that engage and honor our fear without letting it lead. We see this in Exodus 3 with Moses, when he first encounters God in the burning bush and tries to tell God that he’s unworthy of being God’s messenger. But he handles his fear and goes with God anyway. 

We see this with Nachshon, in a midrash so powerful that it seems like Torah. When the Israelites are fleeing Egypt with Pharaoh in hot pursuit, it is Nachshon ben Aminadav who, frightened though he may be, walks into the sea of reeds up to his neck and, only then, is rewarded with the splitting of the waters, making a path to freedom.

Aaron’s relationship with fear, and fear’s control over him, is perhaps among the most interesting in our text. We first meet Aaron as Moses’s brother and mouthpiece. Since our text tells us that Moses is “slow of speech.” It is Aaron who implores Pharaoh to “let my people go,” Aaron whose staff brings the plagues upon the Egyptians, and, of course, Aaron who is invested as the High Priest. While Moses makes his fear clear to God, we never hear Aaron express his fear.

But it is Aaron who lets his fear lead him  when he makes the Golden Calf.  There’s a Midrash, Midrash Tanhuma, that asserts that Aaron is acting to save his life, that when the Israelites first demanded a god, “Hur the son of Caleb arose and rebuked them. They attacked him and killed him. Aaron beheld what had happened and feared for his own life.” But whatever the reason, in Exodus 32, while Moses is on Mt. Sinai receiving Torah for 40 days and 40 nights, the Israelites demand that Aaron make them a God. Aaron instructs them “Break off the gold rings that are in the ears of your wives, your sons and your daughters, and bring [them] to me!” He makes the calf and, when the people greet it with divine adulation, builds an altar before it, leading the Israelites into idolatry. Needless to say, Moses and God aren’t pleased. 

While Aaron survives this massive misstep, which is more than can be said for three thousand calf worshippers slaughtered by Aaron’s cousins the Levites a few verses later, we can only imagine the impact this episode had upon him. By letting his fear take hold, and letting the fear of the people influence him to act on his fear, Aaron set the entire Israelite community back a few steps. Meanwhile Moses, in his bloodthirsty response, “Put every-man his sword on his thigh, proceed and go back-and-forth from gate to gate in the camp, and kill  every-man his brother, every-man his neighbor, every-man his relative!” leapt straight over fear into anger.

Many of us, when we feel the first stirrings of fear, do the same. Anger gives us a direction other than ourselves to work through our emotional state, and it’s much, much less vulnerable. So we’re not afraid of our flight being canceled. We’re angry at the travel industry and the plethora of ways that the customer is disadvantaged. We’re not afraid of being priced out of our neighborhoods. We’re angry that in the wealthiest city in the world it’s difficult for many of us to pay rent, much less get a mortgage. Returning to Dr. Brené Brown, “anger is an action emotion— we want to do something when we’re feeling it. When we feel anger, we believe that someone or something else is to blame for an unfair or unjust situation, and that something can be done to resolve the problem.”

Genuine anger needn’t be a bad thing. But anger doesn’t serve us when it’s masking fear, because without addressing the root of our fear, our anger will be impossible to resolve. Dr. Brown writes “we live in a world where it’s much easier to say ‘I’m so pissed off’ than ‘I feel so betrayed and hurt.’” I agree with her. I believe that many of us reach for anger because we are too afraid of our fear to greet it. But we don’t have to be. 

As we reach Yom Kippur, many of us are in a state of vulnerability. We’ve reached out to friends and family we’ve hurt and we’ve asked forgiveness. We’ve journaled, meditated, and ruminated. We’ve done our best to come here ready for 5784. Maybe, for some of us, our work of teshuvah, of repentance, has let much of our fear dissipate. But if you’re still afraid, don’t ignore that. Welcome your fear’s intention to protect you, because, ultimately, that’s what fear is— our mind, heart, and gut trying to keep us safe from our present, past and future. Sure, sometimes our fear is an overreaction born of a brain made for a creature that needed to be able to make quick decisions when faced with a saber-toothed tiger. But its purpose, its intent, is pure.

So don’t fear your fear. Greet it. Invite it to take a seat in the cozy part of your neshamah, your soul. Ask it to introduce itself. “Hi, Fear. Nice to see you. Can you share a little about what in particular brings you here today?” At worst, your fear won’t be able to answer, but at best you’ll come to understand a part of yourself that needs a little extra care, and you’ll be able to offer it. There is a holiness in that, in listening to yourself and acting with compassion. And that, perhaps, is the other face of fear. 

I talk a lot about how Hebrew is a vocabulary-poor language, without the variety of words we might find in English to describe the nuance of certain things, but actually there are a few words for fear. The one we see most often in modern Hebrew is pachad/פחד, which is fear or dread.  But the word used most often in Torah is yirah/יראה, and, often, it’s used next to a name for God— YHVH, Elohim, etc. So, fear of God. But yirah is  more than that. Often, it’s used to indicate not just fear but awe, a deep reverence. And the very first time it shows up in Torah is before Adam and Eve even leave Eden. When God calls out looking for Adam in the garden, after he and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, Adam replies in Genesis 3:10  אֶת־קֹלְךָ֥ שָׁמַ֖עְתִּי בַּגָּ֑ן וָאִירָ֛א כִּֽי־עֵירֹ֥ם אָנֹ֖כִי וָאֵחָבֵֽא “I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was nude, and so I hid.” The first fear in the universe, according to our sacred text, is a fear held alongside awe.  

There are some emotions that seem like opposites but, when you dig beneath even just a little, you find striking similarities. Love and hate, for example, both require deep attention to and focus on another person, even if that focus manifests quite differently. And, of course, love can turn easily to hate — and sometimes even has to, for a time, when a relationship ends badly, before both parties can move on.

Fear and awe operate in a much-similar fashion. It is easy to fear that which we hold deep reverence for. We fear that the public figures we most respect and whose work we most admire will turn out to have dark secrets in their personal lives. We look at a tornado from a distance and, even as we fear it will come to our neighborhood, we feel awe at its almost supernatural-seeming might. 

As human beings, we seek experiences that move us— experiences that inspire awe. For some of us, that can take the form of attending a concert with tens of thousands of fans singing along with an artist we’ve loved since we were children. For others it can be sitting in a concert hall silent but for a single virtuoso playing a single instrument with impeccable skill. It can be rafting in class 5 rapids or witnessing a birth or death or some other moment of transformation. In lives like many of ours, stuffed to the gills with obligations in a city where there’s always something to do, pausing long enough to access awe can be a tall order. 

But much of what we can find awe within can also invoke fear. We can go on a hike with narrow passages and marvel at the sights while fearing falling. We can move in with a partner we’re amazed loves us and fear that we could get our heart broken one day. We can come to synagogue with joy on the holiest of days and fear that someone who wishes our community ill will cause us harm. 

Perhaps Aaron, too, was afraid and awe-struck at the same time. Perhaps as he bathed, dressed himself in the priestly garments, and brought the animals for sacrifice, what he felt was yirah. Fear of a deathly mistake, fear of God’s wrath, fear of not living up to his responsibilities. And, at the same time, awe— awe at the chance to enter the Holy of Holies, awe at the trust placed in him by the community, awe at the intricacy of the ritual itself. 

In the Jerusalem morning sun, my friends and I were afraid, and we had reason to be, but we were also fully present to the awe of defending the world we wanted to build. In the Holy of Holies, Aaron may have been afraid, and he had reason to be, but he may also have been able to be fully present to the awe of sacred work. In this life, in this society, in this world, we are afraid, and we have reason to be, but as we move into 5784, and into this last day of our most open and vulnerable season, may we find within ourselves additional space for yirah. Tonight, and tomorrow, and this year, may we invoke awe, rather than anger, to accompany our fear. And may we all be sealed in the book of life. G’mar chatimah tovah.