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Fear and Love
In Serving God
(No Contradiction)
Translated
from Hebrew by DR.S. NAthan
l'ilui
nishmat Esther bat mordechai
L'ILUI NISHMAT MAYER HIRSH BEN LAIBEL
Devarim, the Book of
Deuteronomy is
also called The Book of Torah Repeated. Its
verses are filled
with power and splendor, evoking poetry. This
garb of poetic
beauty clothes things that have already been said in
previously and in detail in the
narratives of the exodus from Egypt in the Book of
Exodus, and mainly
in the Book of Bamidbar, Numbers.
However, nothing substantive is added.
Despite what has just
been said, it appears that “The Repeating of the
Torah” holds a
fundamentally new element that transforms it entirely,
in substance as
well as in form. Moses has discovered a new
perspective, and not
on a familiar topic. Rather, a new issue has
arisen to transform
his mission, making it either very difficult or
impossible.
Why does Moses find it
necessary to express himself in such sharp, embittered
terms, when he
is committing himself to the People of Israel and
accepting
responsibility for them upon himself? He is
blaming himself, if
this were possible, and simultaneously binding himself
to them, tying
his own fate to theirs.
Overt rebuke mingles
with covert blame:
“I will not be able to
carry you by myself.” What had he done until
now? What has
changed? What has he
suddenly realized, the faithful shepherd who
took them out of
Egypt,?
Eicha?
“How can I
carry, by myself, your trouble, your burden, and your
quarrel?”
How is Moses' advice,
“Get yourselves wise men” designed to solve this
problem? What
revisions does Moses make in the narrative of the
spies and the description of their weeping,
which had turned into “a weeping for generations”?
“And the thing was good
in my eyes…” Really? Had Moses conceded to
their demand for a
spying expedition with a light and happy heart?
Had he not given Joshua, his faithful disciple, a
special prayer and blessing? “May
God save you from the counsel of the spies.”
It is with a heavy heart
that Moses sends them on their mission, knowing the
temptation that
lies hidden in such a mission. Where is it
hidden?
Here in Devarim we see
even the description of the event itself from an
entirely new
perspective, one indicated by complete and utter
failure: “‘For
in this matter you do not believe,’ that He promises
to bring you to the
Land but you do not believe in Him.” (Rashi)
Last but perhaps worst:
“Also against me, God was incensed, because of
you.” Moses finds
that by his involvement with them, he has taken a
double beating:
He will not merit the coming to the Promised Land, his
heart’s desire,
his dream and goal. Because of them! He is
taking no
responsibility whatsoever. “Because of you,” and
not because of
me. I have done no wrong. As if someone
had found some
trace of wrongdoing in Moses, God’s faithful
servant.
And you have shown
yourselves ungrateful, because you lacked for nothing
all these forty
years traveling this fearsome wilderness of a desert.
Furthermore, what is the
meaning of the new promise? “Today I will begin
putting a fear of
you and a dread of you upon all the nations…and they
will quake and
tremble before you.” (Devarim, 2:25) This
same message is
stated even more clearly and powerfully in Parashat
Va’Etchanan, 4:6)
“For this is your wisdom and your insight in the eyes
of the
nations…and they shall say: ‘This great nation is
simply a wise and
insightful people.’”
Ramban makes a basic
point that sheds light on the new element contained in
Moses' remarks.
(6:26) “‘Would that their hearts would be in awe
of Me this way
always…’ so that man would hold in his own hands the
power to be just
or to be wicked, because 'everything is in Heaven’s
Hands, except fear
of heaven,’ and this is what the scripture is saying,
only in ordinary
human language.”
Here we hold the key to
the riddle behind Moses' words: What is
effective for promoting dvaikut?
Does awe of God bring to “attachedness” to God?
? Or does love?
Moses, “God’s servant”, who has been attached to Him
on a steady basis,
required no preparation in order to connect to his
Creator, as did all
the other prophets. Moses was ever ready.
He had separated
from the ways of men, who are tied to the physical
matter of this
world, who are in need of food, drink, and sleep to
the point of utter
dependency. Moses was non-dependent on these
worldly futilities.
“‘Now what is God your
Lord demanding of you? No more than to be in awe
of Him…’
Yet is awe of God a small matter?” The sages of
the Talmud pose this difficult
question: Is fear and awe of God a small thing?
Yes, they answer.
“For God’s servant, Moses, it is a small
matter.” Moses finds it
difficult to comprehend or to appreciate dependency on
physical
conditions, and his sister Miriam has occasion to
criticize him for
this. Miriam, who loved and revered Moses above
every other human
being, found it difficult to understand how Moses
could have separated from
his wife. She understood separating from one’s
own wife as
indicating a lack of love, for after all separating
because of one’s
duty would be less difficult to understand.
However, she saw his
separating as a deficiency in the emotion of
love.
For this she was smitten
with leprosy, meriting a direct rebuke from the great
and terrible
Focus of Moses', meaning to say: You are in error, in
attributing
to Moses any deficiency of any sort in the emotion of
love.
“Moses, My servant, the faithful one of My house,”
does not only fear
Me. He does not only experience awe without
love. His awe
is love, and his love is awe. These emotions of
love and awe are
intertwined, inseparable twins.
Awe without love does
not last long. External fear imposed by a
fearsome object is not
called awe. “When the thing is canceled, the
[awe] is
canceled.” Love is similar. Love too must
be non-dependent
on any external thing. If it is, “when the thing
is canceled, the
love is canceled.”
Both awe and love are
emotions that originate in the self, in one’s
essential inner
substance, rather than in any sort of survival
mechanism. Moses,
who served God with an attachment that was total and
utter, who was
never not connected with his Creator, found it
difficult to separate –
and truth to tell, he also saw no need for separating
– between the
two. And now he finds suddenly that there has
been a change in
the system, in the way of connecting between the
Creator and the People
of Israel. And the change is profound, reaching
to the very
infrastructure, to the very essence of the ways of
men.
There are peoples for
whom the very substance of government is built upon a
dictatorial
regime. A terrifying dictator cruelly tyrannizes
them, punishes
and puts to death on a regular basis, and they feel
content.
Place over them a ruler elected by free democratic
electoral process,
and behold: Not only do they fail to revere him and
love him, but they
actually despise him, and refuse to obey his
laws. Which means to
say that what comes forth from within themselves, they
consider
unworthy of notice. In contrast, laws forced
upon them by an
outside power, by a strong arm, seem like real laws,
worthy of respect.
A similar phenomenon
occurs on the private plane. People differ from
one
another. One is motivated by love, while another
will obey only
power. Each of these has a strength and a
weakness. The one
motivated by the power of love will not lovingly
accept laws that do
not appear valid in his eyes. He dislikes laws
that restrict him,
that are not compatible with his opinions (yet his
opinions are colored
by personal interests). The second one will be
in awe and behave
respectfully only in the presence of a threatening
regime. He
will not obey a law if there is no policeman around,
and this includes
even laws beneficial to himself, such as traffic
regulations designed
to save his life.
We see here that only a
regime that imposes its authority both through power
and through love,
can truly succeed in the leadership role. A
regime of this type
is the vision of a future yet to come, that will be
actualized only
with the coming of the righteous Redeemer, hopefully
soon and in our
own time.
A significant example of
the sharply contrasting forms of rule is the teacher:
One rules his
class of little ones with an iron fist, while another
teacher rules by
the power of his love for his students. In my
day, two
generations ago, we feared an educator who would not
refrain from
physical punishment, no matter how slight the
misdemeanor. This
teacher was an embittered man who had never undergone
pedagogical
training of any sort, though he was a scholar.
He tyrannized his
students, who dreaded him.
Would anyone think of
placing him in front of a classroom today? The
contemporary
classroom swarms with spoiled children, whom the law
protects against
adult power and intimidation. The reality of the
classroom today
is that the teacher fears the students, and both know
it. Placed
in front of a contemporary classroom, certain teachers
of previous
generations would run for their lives. Their
failure would be a
foregone conclusion.
In a related contrast,
Moses ruled the nation of Israel, uniting and
consolidating them as a
shepherd does his flock, while the Holy One initiated
every connection
with the people, never anticipating any initiative on
their part.
This was a form of Divine Providence that required
none of the
supporting elements of human free choice.
Suddenly, with their
entry into the Promised Land, the Creator sees fit to
present Israel
with the challenge of a new method: The Free Choice
Method.
Here is a land of human
habitation: Dealing with it will mean dealing with
free choice, and
dealing with it by way of one’s physical
conditions. “Every man
under his grapevine and every man under
his fig
tree.” Meaning that the grapevine and the fig
tree might lean too
heavily on man’s connection with God, on man’s direct
approach to the
Creator of the universe, Who has no interest in
physical matter.
Yes, precisely man, as a
physical creature, bent under his burden. Yet
Moses wonders: How
will he rise toward heaven when he is loaded with his
physical burden
to the point of exhaustion? The new method seems
strange to
Moses, whereas he has led them through the desert
where there was no
load of physical burden to bear.
He therefore finds that
there is a need to prepare them, from within, to
educate them, to deal
with the initiative of free choice. It is indeed
‘because of
them’, because of the substantive change they are
undergoing, that
there is no longer a need for his leadership, upon
their entry into the
Land so abundantly endowed with the burden of physical
matter.
Moses' spiritual power
as a presence in the Land would hamper their ability
to make use of
free choice. Viewed from this perspective, all
of Moshe’s
“Repeating of the Torah” takes on a new aspect.
Not only does the Book
of Devarim take on a new dimension, of a far
deeper meaning, but the
entire perception of Judaism takes on a new dimension,
decisively in
favor of man. It puts man in center place, a
sort of
counterweight response: He must complete and
complement the initiative
of the Divine Providence toward him.
From this point on, man
is expected to depart from his passive role as mere
witness. The
mission has now been placed on man’s shoulders: Free
choice, which
expresses sanctity, which indicates that man has the
ability to
sanctify himself. It is now demanded of man that
he attach the
world of physical matter to sanctity. He is
commanded with a new
commandment, one that will decisively affect his
worship of his God:
“Be sacred.”
The Ten Commandments
recur in Parashat Va’Etchanan, in Deuteronomy but with
a few changes, somewhat
different from the way they appeared in the Book of
Exodus, where they
formed part of the Biblical narrative. The
changes are in keeping
with the spirit of the new issues:
The reason given for the
sanctity of Shabat changes from “Remember” to
“Keep”. No longer
is it because the Master on High keeps Shabat, as is
written in the
Book of Exodus: “Because six days, God made the
heavens and the earth,
and He rested on the seventh day.” Rather, it is
“in order that
your slave, your ox, and your donkey, will rest as you
do.” A
prosaic social reason, it seems, unconnected, as it
were, to the
commandments between man and God, its place being
rather among the
commandments governing person to person
relations. Meaning, the
purpose of man’s obligation to keep Shabat is – repair
of the universe.
“And you said: ‘Here God
has shown us…His glory…this day we have seen that God
may speak to a
man, and yet he [remains] alive.’” Yet in the
following verse: “And now,
why should we die?”
Why would they fear the
Godly Presence after they have realized that it is
possible to face God
and remain alive? Is there not a clear
contradiction here?
It appears that the
later verse comes after man has become aware of his
role as a choosing
being, obligated to assume responsibility before
God. This
responsibility is of powerful significance, and
awakens personal
involvement. On careful examination, it awakens
a fear of the
immensely heavy burden that one bears. It is far
more awesome
than the presence of a passive human being who merely
serves as a
witness to the Godly initiative while bearing no
responsibility.
This is the reason behind the Talmudic statement:
“Greater is the one
who is commanded, and does, than the one who is not
commanded, and
does.”
“But you, stand here,
with Me.” This phrase defines Moses' unique
status vis a` vis
the Godly Presence: Your status is different from
theirs. You do
not belong to physical matter. You are Mine!
Then why were Moses'
prayers [pleading to be allowed enter the Land] not
accepted, when he was closer to God than any man on
earth? “That is plenty for you. Speak to
Me no more of this
matter.” Why?
Moses: “And God was
irritated with me for your sakes.” “Because of
you.” He is
not blaming the nation. He is not blaming anyone
at all. He
is also unable to view his non-entry into the Land as
a punishment for
hitting the rock at mei merivah.
Continuing along the
lines of the basic principle discussed above, we must
view the prospect
of Moses' entry into the Land as potentially
introducing a presence of
Godly power that would be incompatible with a worship
of God built on
free choice and human initiative.
This is why Joshua,
Moses' faithful servant, is so suited to the role, as
are the seventy
Elders with him. He is from the people, from
within the
people. By the initiative of the people.
With Joshua
there would be no pressure on them from above, unlike
the sheer
pressure exerted by the mere presence of Moses, their
master who had
taken them out of Egypt and split the sea for them.
The Ramban’s definition
testifies to the substance and spirit of the
matter. On the
phrase, “Would that their hearts would be in awe of Me
this way
always,” he comments: “So that man would hold in his
own hands the
power to be just or to be wicked, because ‘everything
is in Heaven’s
Hands, except fear of heaven,’ and this is what the
scripture is
saying, only in ordinary human language.” These
words of the
Ramban describe an awe that is a source for love, an
awe that is never
separated from love, and a love that is never
separated from awe.
Here is none of that
light and easy love between friends. We find
here a love that
grows from the ground of the most profound awareness,
of the deepest
appreciation, deriving from yirat haromemut,
awe of the
supreme. This is love resulting from profound,
personal, sensory
consciousness of the Godly Presence.
It brings with it a
profound gratitude excluding all else, containing only
this love.
It is dvaikut, expressing thanks from the
depths of one’s heart
for having been privileged to shelter beneath the
wings of the Shechina.
With Moses, fear and awe were the expression of this
love from the
depths of his heart.
The people needed to
cross the threshold and enter the Land. They
needed to confront
physical matter with the goal of sanctifying it, in
order to attach to
the Godly Presence, through expression of the
physical, in which man is
immersed. Only then could physical man’s love
find its proper
expression. Moses did not require this process
of connecting to
the Creator through physical matter.
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