Fear of HaShem - What does it mean?

We Have Nothing to Fear
Except…

To Fear G-d. And just what does that mean? Why should we fear HaShem? We are taught from a young age that G-d is Loving and Kind, full of compassion and all those wonderful attributes. These are the kind of attributes that we, hopefully, saw in our parents. So why should we ‘fear’ a G-d that we know is even better than our “bestest” and most wonderful parent?

The rabbis wanted to teach that we should fear G-d but they did not know how to teach that we should fear a beneficent G-d who was invisible and ultimately unknowable. How could they communicate this concept to the average Jew? G-d was an abstraction and, was and is everything that we know about G-d and at once nothing that we know about G-d. A conundrum.

Then a rabbi sitting the far corner suggested this: “If we are summoned before the king, we have absolutely no idea why. The only thing that we know about the king is that he has absolute control over all of his subjects… he alone controls whether we live or die [think about what you would feel if a couple of black suits and dark glasses showed up at your door, talking to their sleeve, and said that you will go with them. Now!].” “So,” the rabbi continued, “if HaShem is like our King, we should fear Him because He, too, has absolute control over every aspect of our lives.”

HaShem, as we say in our H”H liturgy, controls who will live and who will die; who be fire and who by sword; who by earthquake and so on.

It seems then that that rabbi was right. If for no other reason than the uncertainties of life, we should fear G-d. But is that the only reason? Are there other aspects of ‘fear’ that we should consider?

Someone suggested that we should think of ‘fear’ of HaShem in terms of the ‘awe’ in which we hold Him. I disagree. Awe is a term that has been degraded in usage. We stand in awe of the Grand Canyon – okay, that is HaShem’s creation; but we also stand in awe of Lance Armstrong’ achievements: 7-time winner of the most grueling bicycle race in the world/testicular cancer survivor and return competitor in the same race and still coming in to stand on the podium with much younger men! Maybe you can say that that too is HaShem’s achievement and it is because Lance, with the help of G-d overcame his cancer and it was really G-d who gave Lance the ability in the first place. But is he had not stood in the ‘fear of G-d’, perhaps he would never have made those goals.

So what other words in the English language might give us a better idea of what it means to ‘fear G-d’? From the thesaurus we find: Terror; Dread; Fright; Trepidation; Wonder; Admiration; Respect; Amazement; Surprise; Wonderment; Astonishment… how about this quotation?

“We serve the deities… by drawing near to our ancestors, by purifying ourselves of our sins and stain, in leaving self behind to unite with the public, and in 'dying to self' to become one with the ‘State’.”
From the Japanese Kokutai ni Hongi. Sacred Texts of the World1982, "Purity and Awe" (Ninian Smart and Richard D. Hecht (eds.)

“Think about it…”


This was the presentation to our Shabbos Torah Study Group. We had a lively discussion. (pro & con) Much was left to be considered and discussed further... One comment was; "Not all rabbis got 'A's' in class."

The one thing that was NOT found was - Where did this statement FIRT originate?