Fear of God – why it is important, but also why it is not what you might think it is

Written by Rabbi Elliott Karstadt — 28 April 2024

In the course of the Alyth Chavruta Project that we finished just a couple of weeks ago, we studied a remarkable section of the Talmud that I want to share with everyone this morning.

In the section we studied, the sages of the Talmud are keen to persuade us that it is much more important to fear God than to be learned in Torah.

We had a debate about the word yirah – yirat shamayim, yirat Elohim – which can be translated as ‘fear’ but also as ‘awe’ or ‘respect’.

Today we tend to associate ‘fear’ with being scared. Many in our study group objected to a theology in which we are expected or encouraged to feel afraid or scared of God. For many of us ‘awe’ or ‘revere’ or ‘respect’ felt much more satisfactory as a way of approaching a relationship with God.

And indeed when we looked up the verbal root, yud-resh-aleph in the Talmudic dictionary, it gave us all these definitions.

If we think about the time of year we are in, that notion of being afraid or scared of God is actually not too strange – look at what God did to the Egyptians with the Ten Plagues – should we not be scared of that? Is that not a warning to us about what might happen to us if we displease God? If we act towards others as the Egyptians acted towards us?

Perhaps we (unlike the rabbis of the Talmud) have let go of the idea of the literal truth of the Ten Plagues, and the Exodus in general. For many of us today, the story of the Exodus is one that we tell in spite of the fact that we doubt its veracity, because we feel that it might teach us deeper lessons about ourselves and about our responsibilities as creatures living alongside each other, and trying to form a relationship with God.

Whether we consider it to be a question of fear or awe or respect for God, however we think about it, the rabbis of the Talmud (in this section at least that we studied) want us to understand that this quality is more important than Torah study. And in fact they may even be saying that Torah learning is pointless without fear of God. And I think this was a grappling with themselves and their own desires, since they were so often caught up in their obsession with Torah study.

The rabbis begin to explain this by finding analogies for the difference between these two qualities.

Rabbah bar Rav Chuna said, ‘Any person who has Torah and does not have fear of heaven, is similar to a treasurer to whom the keys to the inner [chamber] have been given, but the keys to the courtyard have not been given – how can they gain entrance?’

In order to be able to study Torah, he is arguing, one first needs to approach with a fear of God – if they do not have that, then Rabbah bar Rav Chuna is suggesting that there is no point in them trying to study Torah – they just won’t get it.

Rabbi Yanai proclaimed, ‘Woe to anyone who does not own a courtyard, but makes a gate for a courtyard!’

Rabbi Yanai’s teaching is an inversion of Rabbah bar Rav Chunah. For Rabbah bar Rav Chuna the fear of God was the courtyard that you needed to access to get to the inner sanctum of Torah. For Rabbi Yannai, the gate, the access point to God, is the Torah, but if there is no fear of God in the form of the inner courtyard, then what is the point of having a gate?

Either way, the point is that there is no point in having Torah learning if it does not come with fear of God.

The rabbis then have another question, which is why. Why is fear of God so important?

Rav Yehudah said, ‘The Holy Blessed One only created the Universe for the sake of those who feared God, as it is said, “And God has done so that they may fear God” (Ecclesiastes 3:14).’

This tells us that the Torah and the rabbis believe that fearing God is really important, and that God acts in order to instil fear, or reverence, or respect. But it still does not answer the question of why. Why does God need us to fear, to revere? And the Talmud could dodge this question, as it does with many questions it does not want to answer. But it doesn’t, and this leads to the most remarkable part of this section of the Talmud.

The Talmud quotes a teaching of Rabbi Elazar: ‘The Holy Blessed One has nothing in the world, but the fear of heaven alone.’ I’m going to repeat that statement, because it is actually pretty remarkable: ‘The Holy Blessed One has nothing in the world, but the fear of heaven alone.’

Here it is in Hebrew (just so that those who understand it can confirm I am not fudging the translation):

אֵין לוֹ לְהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא בְּעוֹלָמוֹ אֶלָּא יִרְאַת שָׁמַיִם בִּלְבַד

In support of this remarkable teaching, Rabbi Elazar quotes from the portion that Sophie read this morning in our second scroll: ‘Now, Israel, what does the Eternal your God ask from you? Only to fear the Eternal your God’ (Deuteronomy 10:12).

Now, this might be an example of the rabbis reading selectively, since the verse actually continues: ‘to fear the Eternal your God, to walk in all God’s ways, to love God, and to serve the Eternal your God with all your heart and with all your soul’.

But it is helping the rabbis (or at least Rabbi Elazar) make a point, which is that God does not have anything if we are not here to love, worship and serve God. That is in this world – maybe somewhere else God has other things going on – but God’s power in this world, as it is comprehensible to us as human beings, relies on us.

In our new Reform machzor (which is soon to arrive for those who have pre-ordered – if you haven’t yet ordered your copy, please click here!), as part of the Study Anthology which you will be able to flick through and read during services at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the editors have included a poem by Yehudah Amichai, in which he says:

I declare with perfect faith
that prayer preceded God.
Prayer created God
God created human beings,
human beings created prayers
that create the God that creates human beings.

It is only through our prayers that God can exist. This is just one theology, and I am not advocating for it as the only theology that is rational to hold. But it is one of the theologies the rabbis were aware of, and which they are grappling with.

There are several midrashim in which a similar argument is made. They are all commenting on a verse from Isaiah, in which God says through the prophet: ‘As you are My witness … I am God’ (Isaiah 43:12). The Midrash takes this to be saying: ‘When you are My witnesses, I am God. When you are not My witnesses, I am (as it were) not God.’ The ‘as it were’ is in brackets because in some versions of the midrash the Hebrew k’ilu – ‘as it were’ or ‘it is as though’ – is present, and in some versions it simply says ‘when you are not My witnesses, I am not God’.

We may think of that as a very radical claim – but it comes from our rabbis – those who were forming our tradition and crafting Jewish life in a way that still endures today – just look at the Pesach seder that we do. Even the most radical seders tick to the same rhythm that the rabbis set out nearly two thousand years ago.

God needs us in order to have power in this world. But we create God’s power because we need in some way too for God to exist. We need to be here today to pray. We need… something that I’m not sure it is possible to articulate. Sometimes when I am on my way to shul on a Shabbat morning I catch myself and the teenage version of me asks why are you doing this?

The Pesach Seder asks this question – keeps asking, why are we doing this? And we answer with a story that brings God into existence. The story is like God. We need it, and it needs us.

And maybe the religious journey of Jewish life is an engagement with that two-way reliance – a grappling with what it means to bring God into our lives, and then to realise what the responsibilities are that come with it.

Which is why ‘fear’ is actually important – it can be scary to confront the realities of what it means to live a life alongside God. The God who we create when we pray, and who created us.

So I will end with that famous story of Nachshon ben Aminadav, the Israelite who, when standing on the shore of the sea, did not wait for God to be revealed, but threw himself into the sea, thereby causing God’s power to make the waters part.

As we continue to sing of God’s power and might throughout Pesach, let us also remember our own power and our own role in making it a reality in our own days.

Shabbat Shalom