We’ve become a culture of fear. Terrorists and fear mongers try to frighten us. Our government leaders instill fear in us: “Code yellow! Code orange!” Advertisers take advantage of our insecurities: “Buy our car and you’ll be safe! Buy our moisturizer and you won’t get old!” And our constant bombardment by the media gives us more to worry about: “Your children will be abducted! Your home will be robbed!” Now even spinach can kill you!
And we live in frightening times. Israel’s war with Hezbollah this summer has left us feeling vulnerable. People tell me that they lie awake at night worrying about Israel’s future and the threat of Iran. Anti-Jewish sentiment is heard not only in the Middle East but right here in the Bay area. As Americans, we feel fear, too. Preparing for the airport makes us feel that our world is unsafe. And even if we protect ourselves from terrorism, we have other things to fear - when will be our next earthquake, who will be the next one diagnosed with cancer?
Fear is very powerful. It causes our legs to tremble and our hearts to race;
it makes our whole being constrict and we can’t breathe. Fear keeps us from being fully alive.
Fear can distort our vision. Perhaps that’s why the Hebrew word for fear, Yirah, shares the same letters with the Hebrew word for sight, R’e-yah.
Before I became a rabbi, I ran a program for Jewish senior citizens. One of “my seniors,” as I called them, was a spunky 90-something named Izzy who’d show up early every day to make the coffee. Izzy wore thick glasses, but at least he had some vision, he explained to me one morning. Fear had once made him blind. Growing up in Europe, there were pogroms and violence in his shtetl and in his own home. As a child, he became blind, literally blind; only when he left Europe and the fear subsided did he get some of his vision back.
Fear makes us close our eyes. But we don’t want to go through life with our eyes closed, do we? But when there is much to fear, what’s a human being to do?
The High Holidays are called in Hebrew the Yamim Noraim, the Days of Fear. Yamim Noraim usually gets translated, Days of Awe, because fear is such an uncomfortable thing to feel. If we called the High Holidays the Days of Fear, probably noone would come to services. We’d all rather the holidays be high than fearful. But the truth is, these days invite us to examine our fears, not so that we’ll get stuck in them, but so that we’ll respond to them more wisely.
Tomorrow we’ll read about Jonah. The prophet runs away in fear and ends up in the darkest place in the world, in the belly of a fish at the bottom of the sea.
We end up in a dark place, too, because fear does not coexist easily in the same heart with trust or hope, joy or gratitude. I know this from my own experience, as I’m sure you do, too. I lived in Israel during the height of the second intifada. I would go to sleep at night in my Jerusalem apartment to the sound of gunfire. Daily life would be interrupted by suicide bombings and sirens rushing to the scene of the attack. Living in a constant state of fear changed me. Each day, I’d nervously walk home from school by way of small back streets, avoiding buses and crowds for fear of getting blown up. I’d stay in my apartment, listening to the awful news of the day, and cry. I went from being an idealistic student who believed in the goodness of the world and of humanity, to being a closed-hearted cynic who was suspicious of the people around me. Fear deadened me. Fear makes us all less alive.
And admitting we’re afraid makes us more vulnerable, so our fear often hides behind anger or cynicism. Our instinctual reaction to fear is fight or flight; if we can’t flee, like Jonah, we’ll fight. Fear threatens to kill us, and then we end up killing others, too, because we’re desperate to protect ourselves.
Look at the confessional that we say throughout Yom Kippur. Al Chet Shechatanu Lifanecha, We have sinned against You. How many of our sins did we commit because we were afraid?
We have sinned against you by hardening our hearts,
(because we were afraid of being disappointed again)
We have sinned against you by jealousy,
(because we were afraid that we didn’t have enough)
We have sinned against you by cruelty,
(because we were afraid of being hurt ourselves)
There are things to be afraid of, and fear is a signal that there might be real danger. But how do we respond wisely to fear, rather than hurting others or just running away, running to television, alcohol, work or anything else that will distract us?
As an alternative to Jonah, our Torah reading tomorrow centers on the Cohen Gadol, the high priest. The Torah instructs that on Yom Kippur, Aaron, the first Cohen Gadol, must enter the holy of holies, the dwelling place of God. He is to purge it of its impurities, and he’ll pronounce the name of God, as it’s done by him alone.
It’s a frightening ritual. The Torah says more than once: v’lo ya-mut, so that he not die, it must be done in a very particular way. One mistake, one wrong move, the Torah warns, and he’s dead. The high priest knows that he must enter the heart of the world all alone; they even tie a rope around his leg, so that if he dies in there, he can be pulled out.
And if that weren’t terrifying enough, the Torah adds another dimension to Aaron’s fear. The instructions begin: God spoke. . . Acharei Mot Shnei B’nei Aharon, after the deaths of the two sons of Aaron who died when they drew too close to the Presence of God. The Torah reminds Aaron that his own sons were killed while doing their priestly service. The possibility of dying is not just an irrational fear, it’s real. And it’s not just fear, it’s fear with pain, the pain of his own sons’ deaths.
The Torah didn’t need to mention that Aaron’s sons had been killed - that took place several chapters ago. But the Torah reminds us of this here, in the Yom Kippur ritual, to teach us that even when we are deathly afraid, even when our fear is filled with the pain of real loss, our fear mustn’t stop us from seeking life and connection and God.
Like Aaron, when we go forward even if it’s frightening, we go into the holy of holies. When we refuse to let fear stop us from living, we go to the most important place we can go in the world.
I have a friend who was recently robbed at gunpoint in broad daylight right in front of his home. Simply walking on his own street is now terrifying for him, but he told me that he’s not going to stay inside in fear. Courage, he said, is not: not being afraid; it’s being afraid and going forward anyway.
They say that death is not our biggest fear; more people are afraid of public speaking. As Jerry Seinfeld put it, that means at a funeral, more people would rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy. I, too, am afraid of public speaking. I used to sink into my chair so the teacher wouldn’t call on me in class. Oral presentations gave me a pounding heart and a nervous stomach. But now I’m standing here speaking to all 800 or so of you. I won’t say I’ve conquered the fear, but I’ve decided not to let fear control me.
When the Cohen Gadol goes into the holy of holies, not only does he go in with his fears, but he goes to the place where God dwells, to a place of courage, strength, and faith. He says the name of God, and the people hear him, bow down, and proclaim God’s praises. See, fear makes us forget God; it makes us lose trust and hope. When we let fear create our reality, we’re ruled by fear and we serve those who try to frighten us instead of serving that which is Godly. We can be like the cohen gadol, who, despite fear, brings God’s blessings to the world.
After that difficult year in Israel, I returned to New York for my last year of rabbinical school, just in time for 9/11. After the attacks, I resisted the instinct I had had in Jerusalem to stay locked up in my apartment. So did everyone else in New York. We all found ways to offer to others whatever skills we had, to find connection, and to be like the cohen gadol, walking forward, Acharei Mot, after the deaths, to bring the Presence of God to everyone else who was afraid, too. And despite great fear, New York became a holy place.
The Yamim Noraim, these days of fear, say: what’s frightening out there might not change, but we can. One of the central prayers of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is Unetaneh Tokef. It says: this day is awful and fearful. On this day, it is decided who will live and who will die, who in old age and who before their time, who by fire and who by water.
The importance of this prayer is not that it tells us to be afraid - we really didn’t need to be told that. We already wonder: who by heart attack and who by stroke? Who by Alzheimers and who by car crash? Rather it tells us what to do when we are afraid: Teshuva, Tefillah, Tzedekah Maavirin et roa hagezerah - Turning, Prayer, and righteous action temper the awfulness of the decree.
It does NOT say that we can remove the awful decree, as some think: we might not be able to stop hurricanes, cancer, terrorism, or heartbreak, but we can lessen the awfulness of the decree.
How? Through teshuva, turning to God and to other people, through tefillah, prayer, finding faith and courage, and through tzedekah, giving to others, overpowering fear with kindness, restoring someone else’s ability to trust. Fear can create its own awful reality that can rule our lives, but we can create a different reality.
The Torah teaches us this in the story of the 12 scouts who are sent to check out the promised land when we were on our journey to Israel. Ten come back terrified and demoralized: “the people there are huge and strong,” they report, “they looked like giants, and we looked like tiny grasshoppers in our eyes and in theirs!” Only two of the scouts come back with a good report: “the land is good, and God is with us; have no fear of those people.” Again, fear is tied to vision, perception; the story teaches that our perception of the world can be created by our fear or by our faith.
But as is often the case, the voices of fear are louder than the voices of faith; the fearful scouts work the people into such a panic that they beg to go back to the slavery of Egypt. In the end, those who were paralyzed by their fear spend the rest of their lives stuck wandering in the desert; those who had faith go forward and reach the Promised land.
They were like Jane Stern, the author of Ambulance Girl. Stern describes her self a Jewish hypochondriac on the order of Woody Allen, who suffered from claustrophobia, fear of flying, and panic attacks and was immobilized by anxiety and fear of death. Stern decided to try a different reality; she walked straight into her fear and became an emergency medical technician.
She writes in her memoir, “the closest I have ever felt to God was in the back of my ambulance. The most fully alive I have felt was when I held a dead man’s head and ventilated him back to life. . . I still get a rush of panic when my pager goes off and think,‘I can’t do this. Then I do it and I’m OK.’”
That’s the meaning of the words we pray - we might not change the decree that there will be fear and death, but though turning, prayer, and giving to others we can soften the awfulness of the decree.
And that is what it means to be a Jew: we maintain hope and faith despite fear, as we have done for 3000 years. I am inspired by my friends who are now making aliyah and by our brothers and sisters who live in Israel. Even with Hezbollah and Iran trying to threaten us, we continue to live and thrive and go forward, as we have through these thousands of years of attempts to destroy us.
The liturgy of these Days of Fear asks us to face our fears. What are we most afraid of? And how does that fear lead us to hurt others? How does fear shut us down from all that is Godly like love and hope? How does that fear keep us from going into the holy of holies, keep us from the Promised land, keep us from life?
Every day during these Days of Fear, we read Psalm 27:
God is my light and my help, whom shall I fear?
God is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?. . .
Hope in God, be strong and courageous of heart and hope in God
This is our time of teshuva, tefillah, and tzedekah, of turning to God or to whatever we call our Source of hope and inner strength and courage, and drawing from that Source.
We must be like the cohen gadol, who goes forward into the holy of holies, even when we’re afraid.
This is the time to restore our faith in goodness, to reach out beyond our fear to another person to demonstrate through our actions that the world is safe and that it is possible to trust.
We can lessen the awfulness of the decree. We can refuse to serve fear and instead serve God through our own courage.
May we turn these Days of Fear into days of connection, days of hope, days of Faith.
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