Rosh Hashanah: On Fear

My children are scared of the dark. The truth is, I am a little scared myself. It is at night in the dark that my worst fears emerge – another Holocaust, thieves attacking in the night, child abduction, wrongful imprisonment, torture, war, and generally, crazy evil people doing unspeakably horrible things with no one to stop them.

Fear is a major theme of Rosh Hashanah. But it is a different kind of fear, and I wonder whether it can help us manage these other fears. The fear of Rosh Hashanah is the fear, not of humans, but of God. On these days, we proclaim God eternal King in contrast to human authorities. We stand before Him like “broken shards,” awaiting judgment, with hil and re’adah, “fear and trembling.” On every day of the year we say the prayer Aleinu. But only on these days do we bow fully to the ground, showing our sense of awe before God. And we pray, in each and every one of the amidah prayers of both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Uvekhen ten pahdekha, “And so, O God, please place Your fear on all Your creations.” We actually pray for fear!

What is it about this kind of fear, this fear of God, that is so desirable? First, it makes us feel small. Not small and insecure. Small and calm, comfortable in the knowledge of our tiny place in the universe. We are children to God, our eyes teluyot, dependent on Him for survival. Knowing that He is a good parent, we can relax into His awesomeness; my 5-year-old likes to occasionally pretend she is a baby in order to be reminded of the comfort of just such entire dependence on another. Those other fears of wild and dangerous people are nothing if we are wrapped in this kind of an all-encompassing secure relationship: “Though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I fear no harm for You are with me” (Ps 23).

Our smallness in contrast to God’s greatness has another implication. It makes us humble with respect to others and opens us up to each other and to God in new ways. Even the greatest among us is nothing with respect to the awesome King God, and so we need each other, we reach for each other, we open ourselves to each others’ gifts. One of the three ways of turning around bad decrees during this time of year is to do tzedakah, to help others in some charitable way. The shape of the shofar symbolizes this openness; it begins with a small opening toward the individual and ends with a larger one, opening out toward the world. When we fear God, we band together to help each other, but when we fear human beings, we close ourselves off. We try to protect ourselves by running away, escaping, hiding. One of my most consistent nightmares as a child was of hiding in a closet while being pursued by Nazis. Fear of humans shuts us in, but fear of God opens us up.

We are small when we fear God, but we are also very large. We are large because God has given us control over own destinies through the ability to do teshuva, repentance. Unlike an unpredictable cruel human despot who metes out evil decrees randomly, God has made it clear that His judgment depends on our actions; if we change those actions, any harm in His decree will be rescinded. And so, our fear of God’s judgment does not oppress us or cow us but empowers us, compelling us to act differently, more rightly in the world. Fear of humans, by contrast, paralyzes us, shuts us down. When we think of all the atrocities committed by human beings, our hearts are filled with such doom and heaviness that life feels pointless, and we wonder whether there is any purpose in taking an active part in it at all. Fear of humans leads to pessimism and immobilization, fear of God to optimism and action. The shofar’s call is a clarion call to action, not a siren warning us to hide from an approaching army. That the sound of that call to action is frightening and awesome is no accident. It is by reminding us of God’s awesomeness, as at the terrifying experience of Sinai, that the shofar blasts do their job of waking us up to the large role we must play in this world. The shofar should at once make us feel small and large, awed and empowered, humbled and called.

The shofar is also associated with light. We recite these words from Psalm 89 after the first set of shofar blasts: “Fortunate is the people who knows the shofar blast; O Lord, in the light of Your countenance will they walk.” With each new set of shofar blasts we pray that God should bring out our judgment ka’or, “as light.” Why light? What does light have to do with the shofar? Light is a symbol for the great clarity brought by God’s judgment, but it is also a symbol of God’s power to conquer evil and darkness, a symbol of the kind of light-filled optimistic view of the world brought about by a world-view in which fear of God replaces fear of humans. My children fear darkness. In a way, all fear of human evil is a fear of darkness in the world. What we are doing with the shofar, then, is blasting away that darkness and replacing it with light, reminding ourselves that the awe of God speaks louder than the fear of humans, reminding ourselves whom to fear and whom not to fear. As we say at the end or prayers throughout this season, “The Lord is my light and my help; whom should I fear?” (Ps 27).

May we only fear God.