Today another year begins. We gather here to connect with our community and with God, hoping to start anew. During the month of Elul, the last month of the Jewish year, we start preparing for the Yamim Norayim by reading Psalm 27. Here is the opening verse:
Psalm 27:1 of David.
The Eternal is my light and my help;
whom shall I fear?
The Eternal is the stronghold of my life,
whom shall I dread?
Psalm 27 is beautiful, and every year I look forward to the opportunity, and the challenge, of diving into the meanings of this poem. This year, the beginning verse grabbed my attention because it brings two different words for fear. The psalmist asks:
Whom shall I fear (mi mi yir’ah)? Whom shall I dread (mi mi efchad)?
Why would the psalmist insist on having two different words for the same feeling?
Malbim (Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Wisser, Warsaw, late 19th century) wrote that although these two words seem to be describing the same feeling, yir’ah is a fear from a known thing, and pachad is dread that comes from something unknown. When a person fears clear enemies, it is called yir’ah; and when a person fears that foes secretly plot evil against them, without their knowledge, this is called pahad.
According to the Malbim, yir’ah is fear that has a clear reason to be felt, a fear that is the result of seeing something that can be acted upon. The kind of fear that we call yir’ah is the one that can be understood as a life saver, because it is protective, it is healthy … and it is uncomfortable. Yir’ah is the fear that comes up because we are aware of God’s presence, the mixture of awe for God’s creation and the ability to see both the beauty and the ugliness of people. Yir’ah is the fear that opens us to considering possibilities, to find creative solutions to move past the feeling and act. It is what our ancestors felt, from Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakai in Jerusalem in the year 70 CE to the Jews from eastern Europe who left before WWII, and because they acted on these feelings we are standing here today.
Pachad on the other hand is debilitating. It is an anxiety that will not leave us, dreading something that we have no idea from where it will come and when it will come. It leaves us in a state of constant vigilance. Pachad paralyzes us, gives us the feeling of being stuck.
Pachad makes us blind to God’s presence, and that is terrifying. Pachad prevents us from moving forward and finding creative solutions for our problems.
There are so many events, every day, that trigger uncomfortable reactions, leaving us without an ability to understand if what we feel is pachad or if it is yir’ah. The world around us seems chaotic, with wars that threaten the survival of countries and people around the world. We feel for the future of the State of Israel, hurting together with the families of the hostages that still have their loved ones suffering in Gaza, with this unending war in Gaza, with the fractured Israeli society, and with Israel’s diminishing status among the nations.
We feel for the future of the Jewish community in the Diaspora, as we detect a rise in antisemitism, and as the divisions among us seem overwhelming. We read newspaper articles that equate the government of Israel with the entire Israeli society and with Jews around the world, making the early 20th century political cartoons come to mind, depicting Jews as both uber capitalists and uber communists in images that helped secure persecution of our people during different times and different parts of the world.
We feel for our Country, where it is now acceptable to use words to talk about people in horrifying ways, allowing for speech that destroys instead of build, words that sow divisiveness and vindictiveness, resulting in the deterioration of the fabric of our society.
There is political divisiveness that destroys any semblance of humanity in people.
Everywhere we look, we find unhelpful labeling, suspicion, and division. Should I call what I am feeling yir’ah or pachad? Do I have a clear picture of what is happening, and if so, how do I act? Am I just too blind to recognize the moment in which I am living?
Is history repeating itself, and I am just too blind to see it? History repeats itself, that is true, but it is not necessarily the greatest teacher. Things change; places and situations are not the same. History is not a copying machine. If all I needed to do was to look to the past and then know what to do in the future, it would be easy.
And that is why yir’ah, the awe for God’s world and the fear that comes from wondering if I am following in God’s steps feels uncomfortable. There is nothing that can tell me with certainty what will happen and that I will know exactly what to do and how to act.
I have to lean on the experience of yir’ah, feeling the awe and fear so I can act in the best way possible. I would like to be as Wednesday Addams from the Netflix series. The thing I most appreciate about her is that she recognizes the danger in the situation. It is not that she is fearless; she is not. She does not deny that she is afraid. She is able to walk through the feeling and act. She has yir’ah.
Psalm 27 puts both words for fear, pachad and yir’ah, in its beginning because we must distinguish between what is truly a reason to be afraid, to feel yir’ah and what is a spinoff of our anxieties, the feeling of pachad. At the end of the psalm, we see the outline of the distinction between the two. At the end of psalm 27 we read: kaveh el Adonai, hazak veyametz libecha vekave el Adonai.
Place your hope in the Eternal. Strengthen and fill your heart with courage and connect with the Eternal.
This translation is more literal than the one we have in our mahzor. It conveys in a better way what the message for us is these Days of Awe.
We place our hopes in the Eternal, and at the same time, we strengthen and fill our hearts with courage. We take the two sides of yir’ah, fear and awe, and create the space in our hearts to be clear-eyed about the wonders in this world as well as the real dimensions of the dangers that surround us. And then we connect with the Eternal. The word for connection is kaveh, which means both hope and a thread that connects. How do we connect with the Eternal while filling our hearts with courage, knowing that we do have true yir’ah?
The answer comes from Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah in the Pirkei Avot (3:17).
He said: Where there is no wisdom, there is no fear of God (yir’ah); where there is no fear of God (yir’ah), there is no wisdom.
Rabbi Elazar teaches us that true yir’ah, the fear that comes up because we are aware of God’s presence, the mixture of awe for God’s creation and the ability to see both the beauty and the ugliness in people reflects having wisdom, and with that wisdom comes the helpful fear that saves our lives.
The wisdom that comes from Yir’ah enables us to ponder, to be thoughtful, to give the facts proper consideration and careful examination, and act accordingly. Yir’ah, according to Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria, is a demonstration of humility. Yir’ah is admitting that we don’t have to have all the answers – indeed, it is to recognize that we will never have all the answers, and that uncertainty is what leads us to the right frame of mind. Yir’ah is what provides us the opening for curiosity, that leads to opening ourselves to possibilities, and to creative solutions. True wisdom comes from the process that helps us balance all the facts and move forward with a courageous and strengthened heart.Without anxiety and with just the right amount of fear our ancestors were able to move when they needed to move, as well as maintain this rich tradition from which we all benefit.
Only when we can use our wisdom, balanced with our yir’ah and our connection with God we are able to find the creative solutions for the issues we face. In these Yamim Norayim, in these days of awe and fear, I wish us the wisdom and the discernment that we need to change the course of our lives when we need to do so, and to grow in wisdom as we contemplate the amazing world that God has given us.