Mitzvah 4; To Fear HaShem

The fourth mitzvah (following the enumeration of Rambam) is the mitzvah “To fear HaShem”. The Torah states in Devarim 6:13 “Es HaShem Elohecho tirah” which translates “HaShem your G.D shall you fear…”

To properly understand the mitzvah it is critical to have a clear definition of tirah. The root of tirah is yirah which carries two connotations. One connotation is fear, and the other is to be awed.

These are two distinct emotions that are inspired from different points. Let us address these two connotations before we delve in the nature of the mitzvah.

Classical fear is the fear that one experiences when encountering a dangerous person, animal or situation. We will call this danger-generated fear. This fear is inspired by the imminent danger or some other negative consequence that we anticipate. Fear is a wonderful gift that HaShem blessed us with. Fear motivates us to make good choices that are for our best welfare. Without fear we would be so much more vulnerable. We protect ourselves from opposing forces because of the fear that we sense.

When we apply this connotation to the fourth mitzvah, the mitzvah takes on the understanding that we should fear G.D because the consequence of confronting G.D can be costly if we are not careful. This fear is referred to as “fear of the punishment”. With such a fear, one adequately fulfills the mitzvah of fearing HaShem.

The second connotation, to be awed, is an awe-generated fear. When one confronts a person, situation or event that is much bigger or greater than him he is overwhelmed with an emotion that we might call fear or perhaps awe. The greater the person, situation or event is the smaller the person will feel and the greater the sense of awe will be. We have all experienced this sense of awe when looking over a mountain range when you can see 40 miles to the left and 40 miles to the right. You are struck with an incredible sense of smallness – you are standing in awe of the greatness that you are beholding. This emotion is experienced when meeting a great person or a great event. Some people are in awe when attending a presidential inauguration for the same reason.

When we apply this connotation to our mitzvah, the mitzvah takes on the understanding that we be in awe of HaShem because of the greatness of HaShem. The awe-generated fear is the optimal way of fulfilling the mitzvah of “Es HaShem Elohecho tirah” because it takes a person to a much higher level of fear/awe.

Now that we have identified the definition of the mitzvah, let us try to get our hands around this mitzvah in terms of practical ways of achieving this mitzvah.

The difficulty in fulfilling this mitzvah is that fear is experienced only when there is an acute awareness of the person or situation that is being feared. For example, before 9/11/2001 America was not afraid of terrorism whatsoever. If there was an alert that people should stay away from lower Manhattan on that morning most people if not every person would have ignored it. It would have been meaningless. Because nobody was aware that terrorism is possible on American soil. Today, however, if the police announce that there is suspected terrorist threat on one building downtown you can be sure that very few people will be near that building. What changed? The level of awareness that there really is a threat.

Keeping that in mind our greatest struggle in this mitzvah is making ourselves aware of HaShem’s Existence as well as HaShem’s Greatness. The more we can bring ourselves to recognize His Existence and His Greatness the closer we will come to fulfilling this mitzvah in its optimal way.

Let us attempt to make this awareness a reality within ourselves. Before doing that it is important that we understand the difficulty we confront and then perhaps we can dislodge that difficulty thereby opening the way to achieving awareness.

The difficulty we confront in arousing within ourselves an awareness of HaShem’s Greatness is due to the abstract nature of HaShem’s Existence. As we live our life in the physical world we do not touch, see, hear HaShem or any other form of physical perception of Him. Therefore the only form of perception by which to perceive HaShem is intellectual, which is essentially abstract. The difficulty with bringing an intellectual awareness to the level of the emotion is that all our senses are telling us that there is nothing here. While your intellect tells that there must be a G.D that knows all that you do, all that you say and all that you think, your experiential physical perceptions tell you that this is not true. How can there be a being that is so involved in my life and I do not see anybody? There is effectively a conflict between the intellect and the physical. How does one overcome this hurdle?

The first step is to find a parallel in our physical world that reflects the intellectual. Then we need to focus on that parallel and contemplate it well until we are able to take the energy generated from the physical parallel and carry it over to the intellectual.

What is the intellectual awareness that we have of HaShem’s Greatness? We know that HaShem created the universe and all that it contains including the physical forces such as gravity, magnetism and so on. This creation also includes space, time, light and darkness and so on. We also know that creation implies that HaShem used nothing to create this universe. The only source of energy that HaShem used to create everything was Him! (HaShem did not have a pack of energy that He used because there was nothing other than Him, no packs of energy either.) Now, that of course is a bit paradoxical, namely, if there was nothing other than Him how can He create everything from Him. If He is everything than everything already existed before He created it. And if it only came into existence after His existence from what did He create it? The analogy that we can find in our physical world that we experience is that of the dreamer and the dream. Within the dream everything exists just like in real life. However, outside the dream, namely from the dreamers perspective the dream is just a dream it does not exist. (I would refer you to our blog, the post titled Mitzvah 2 where I elaborate on the relationship between Sleepy Joe and his dream characters Mike and Ike.)

If you are still with me at this point let’s attempt to move take it to the next level. Let us now contemplate how I am actually non-existent because I am essentially the dream of HaShem. Although within my world, which is all a dream of HaShem, I exist as does my family and possessions and accomplishments and difficulties and pleasures, nevertheless, in objective reality I do not exist. I am nothing more than the dream. The only thing that truly exists is the dreamer Himself. The more I am able to relate to this notion the closer I come to absolute awe.

We mentioned before that awe is inspired when one recognizes his smallness relative to what is inspiring him. It therefore follows that the closer I get to the recognition that I am naught but a dream and HaShem is the dreamer, the closer I approach absolute awe; I approach the line of recognition of absolute smallness.

This explains the meaning of the Talmud’s statement about Moshe. The Talmud states that although it is difficult for most people to achieve the Awe of HaShem for Moshe is was quite easy. The reason that Moshe awed HaShem with no difficulty was because he talked with HaShem on a daily basis. To Moshe the existence of HaShem and consequently the non-existence of himself was so elementary that he was in a constant state of awe.

And so in summation; the way to achieve the mitzvah of fearing HaShem is first of all focusing on the consequence of disobeying HaShem’s Will and the reward for obeying His Will. That simple fear is already an accomplishment of this mitzvah. In addition to this approach one should certainly contemplate that sheer smallness of Man relative to HaShem and be inspired that in spite of this infinite disparity between Man and his Creator, the Creator maintains an ongoing system of support for Man.

How awesome!