 | Fear doesn't seem like an emotion we choose. Whether we experience fear as an overpowering wave, a dull ache in the gut or something else, we rarely go looking for fear. Even so, especially so, our existential choice in this season, especially this year, is whether we will choose to allow fear to inhibit us. Our answer matters utterly now. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Devarim 5784 (2024)
Click here for last year's D'var Torah on this portion.
Why do we fear? Really, think about it. What functions might the emotion we call fear serve in our lives? Why are our lives better for it?
Fear is one part neurobiology, a natural impulse that helps keep us from becoming lunch, and one part learning from life's slings and arrows. At its core, fear is a reaction that prompts us to avoid pain – whether the future pain of an impending threat, or past pain unresolved and projecting itself forward into our present reality to get our attention.
So why does this week's Torah portion urge us "Do not fear" – much less five separate times? What are we to make of these words as we approach Tisha b'Av and the Season of Meaning, when antisemitism is surging and, as of the day I'm writing these words, Israel is bracing for an attack from Iran and its proxies in Lebanon and Yemen?
Perhaps like a parent, when Torah repeats herself, she's making an especially important point. Maybe unlike a parent, when Torah repeats herself, she tends to address her words to multiple different levels simultaneously.
This week's portion opens the Book of Deuteronomy. This deuter ("second") onomy ("telling") is Moses' recount of the Children of Israel's 40-year journey as they re-approach the Land of Promise. The entire Book of Deuteronomy is Moses' swan song – his long goodbye, his last chance to position the Children of Israel for a worthy future beyond him.
Moses' top priority is to ensure that history doesn't repeat. As Torah laid out a few weeks ago, our spiritual ancestors were too afraid to enter the Land when they approached the first time – afraid of the unknown, afraid of difficulty, afraid of their own self-perceived smallness. Their fear inhibited their future: their slave mentality still predominated, so they recoiled rather than move forward. That's why, according to Torah, God sent the Children of Israel back into the desert for 40 years: only a next generation that never knew bondage could try again.
Now this next generation (spiritually speaking, we ourselves) stand at the gateway to the Land (spiritually, our souls and the New Year ahead). And now Moses tells us what happened "last time," so we don't repeat history. Don't do as happened last time: do not fear.
The kind of fear Moses urges against isn't the neurobiological response to threat or a mind-numbing blindness to the world around us. Our world is full of real threats worthy of legitimate fear, especially now.
The real question, and ultimately our choice however difficult to imagine, is what response our legitimate fear will generate. We do get to choose.
A fear that renders us shrunken, passive or so pessimistic that we can't act boldly will doom us, says Moses... says our warming planet... says the resurging tide of antisemitism... says the State of Israel... says the fragility of U.S. democracy... says weakening community institutions... says our hearts and souls somehow bearing it all and trying not to buckle. Ruled by that kind of fear, we cannot go forward: there can be no worthy future.
But we know that courage isn't the absence of fear. Rather, courage is a triumph over fear's power to shrunk us, a commitment that something is more important than fear.
Courage is what we need now – right now, as we approach Tisha b'Av and the pivot into the Season of Meaning. Courage is what we need now – right now, as we face a Mideast on the brink. Courage is what we need now – right now, as we enter the 2024 election season.
Do not fear so as to become stuck or turn away. Go forward! Got it. But why five times?
Jewish mysticism holds that each of us inhabits five "levels" of spiritual existence. In the language of their day, Jewish mystics deemed each level to operate by a "level" of "soul":
Devarim 5784 (2024)
Click here for last year's D'var Torah on this portion.
Why do we fear? Really, think about it. What functions might the emotion we call fear serve in our lives? Why are our lives better for it?
Fear is one part neurobiology, a natural impulse that helps keep us from becoming lunch, and one part learning from life's slings and arrows. At its core, fear is a reaction that prompts us to avoid pain – whether the future pain of an impending threat, or past pain unresolved and projecting itself forward into our present reality to get our attention.
So why does this week's Torah portion urge us "Do not fear" – much less five separate times? What are we to make of these words as we approach Tisha b'Av and the Season of Meaning, when antisemitism is surging and, as of the day I'm writing these words, Israel is bracing for an attack from Iran and its proxies in Lebanon and Yemen?
Perhaps like a parent, when Torah repeats herself, she's making an especially important point. Maybe unlike a parent, when Torah repeats herself, she tends to address her words to multiple different levels simultaneously.
This week's portion opens the Book of Deuteronomy. This deuter ("second") onomy ("telling") is Moses' recount of the Children of Israel's 40-year journey as they re-approach the Land of Promise. The entire Book of Deuteronomy is Moses' swan song – his long goodbye, his last chance to position the Children of Israel for a worthy future beyond him.
Moses' top priority is to ensure that history doesn't repeat. As Torah laid out a few weeks ago, our spiritual ancestors were too afraid to enter the Land when they approached the first time – afraid of the unknown, afraid of difficulty, afraid of their own self-perceived smallness. Their fear inhibited their future: their slave mentality still predominated, so they recoiled rather than move forward. That's why, according to Torah, God sent the Children of Israel back into the desert for 40 years: only a next generation that never knew bondage could try again.
Now this next generation (spiritually speaking, we ourselves) stand at the gateway to the Land (spiritually, our souls and the New Year ahead). And now Moses tells us what happened "last time," so we don't repeat history. Don't do as happened last time: do not fear.
The kind of fear Moses urges against isn't the neurobiological response to threat or a mind-numbing blindness to the world around us. Our world is full of real threats worthy of legitimate fear, especially now.
The real question, and ultimately our choice however difficult to imagine, is what response our legitimate fear will generate. We do get to choose.
A fear that renders us shrunken, passive or so pessimistic that we can't act boldly will doom us, says Moses... says our warming planet... says the resurging tide of antisemitism... says the State of Israel... says the fragility of U.S. democracy... says weakening community institutions... says our hearts and souls somehow bearing it all and trying not to buckle. Ruled by that kind of fear, we cannot go forward: there can be no worthy future.
But we know that courage isn't the absence of fear. Rather, courage is a triumph over fear's power to shrunk us, a commitment that something is more important than fear.
Courage is what we need now – right now, as we approach Tisha b'Av and the pivot into the Season of Meaning. Courage is what we need now – right now, as we face a Mideast on the brink. Courage is what we need now – right now, as we enter the 2024 election season.
Do not fear so as to become stuck or turn away. Go forward! Got it. But why five times?
Jewish mysticism holds that each of us inhabits five "levels" of spiritual existence. In the language of their day, Jewish mystics deemed each level to operate by a "level" of "soul":
 | Nefesh (נֶפֶשׁ) – our embodied being, soul animating physical life including our natural instincts; Ruah (רוּחַ) – our emotional being, soul animating "personality," breathed into life by the Breath of Life; Neshamah (נְשָׁמָה) – our intellectual being, soul able to titrate pure thought, ethics and morality; Hayyah (חָיָּה) – our spiritual being, soul transcendent in conscience, dignity and faith that can sense the sacred we call God both far beyond and deep within; Yehidah (יְּחִידָה) – our essence inherently unified with its source in sacred Oneness All five words can mean "soul," yet these five levels – action, emotion, thought, transcendence and ultimate unity – are distinct. They also inherently inter-are. We live only by all five together in body, heart, mind, life spark and beyond. Only by all five can we fully live. |
I imagine Torah repeating "Do Not Fear" five times because each of our five "levels" or soul spheres (by whatever name we call them) needs this reminder to choose more than fear. We need this reminder exactly now in our spiritual year, to radiate courage less fear hobble us when action and transformation are most urgent.
In body (Nefesh), we need physical courage and resilience to face and transform a world too often poised on the brink. In emotion (Ruah), we need courage to counter the emotional shrinkage around us and within us, so that we can face the hurts we caused and resentments we harbor. In mind (Neshamah), we need the courage of our convictions and the power to live by them amidst turbulence and threat. In spirit (Hayyah), we need courage to vision the Sacred and the True North of our lives amidst much that would occlude and disparage them.
And our essence (Yehidah), which perhaps we rarely if ever truly sense? Our essence is always pure, always unified, always attached to the One. Especially now, we need this assurance even if not always the faith or feeling, the hope even if not experience.
As Reb Nahman of Breslov famously taught, כָּל הָעוֹלָם כֻּלוֹ גֶשֶׁר צָר מְאוֹד וְהָעִיקָר לֹא לְפַחֵד כְּלָל / Kol ha-olam kulo gesher tzar me'od v'ha-ikar lo l'faheid klal – "All the world is very narrow bridge, and the point is not to fear at all."
In this season of anxiety, may each of us seek and find courage in ourselves, in each other, in our community, in our people and all well-meaning people everywhere, in our beloved State of Israel, and in the Eternal Hope, Love and Presence we call God.
In body (Nefesh), we need physical courage and resilience to face and transform a world too often poised on the brink. In emotion (Ruah), we need courage to counter the emotional shrinkage around us and within us, so that we can face the hurts we caused and resentments we harbor. In mind (Neshamah), we need the courage of our convictions and the power to live by them amidst turbulence and threat. In spirit (Hayyah), we need courage to vision the Sacred and the True North of our lives amidst much that would occlude and disparage them.
And our essence (Yehidah), which perhaps we rarely if ever truly sense? Our essence is always pure, always unified, always attached to the One. Especially now, we need this assurance even if not always the faith or feeling, the hope even if not experience.
As Reb Nahman of Breslov famously taught, כָּל הָעוֹלָם כֻּלוֹ גֶשֶׁר צָר מְאוֹד וְהָעִיקָר לֹא לְפַחֵד כְּלָל / Kol ha-olam kulo gesher tzar me'od v'ha-ikar lo l'faheid klal – "All the world is very narrow bridge, and the point is not to fear at all."
In this season of anxiety, may each of us seek and find courage in ourselves, in each other, in our community, in our people and all well-meaning people everywhere, in our beloved State of Israel, and in the Eternal Hope, Love and Presence we call God.
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