Parashat Ekeb- Fear of God
Moshe Rabbenu instructs in Parashat Ekeb, "And now, O Israel, what does Hashem your God ask of you? Only to fear Hashem your God – to walk in all His ways, to love Him, to serve Hashem your God with all your heart and all your soul, to observe the Misvot of Hashem and His statutes that I command you this day" (10:12-13).
One way to understand these verses is that they come to teach us the key element that underlies all religious observance. Moshe tells us that all we need is "to fear Hashem your God," to experience genuine Yir’at Shamayim (fear of Heaven). Once we have acquired fear of God, then everything else listed here – "to walk in all His ways, to love Him, to serve Hashem…" – will come naturally. The hard part is that critical first step of developing Yir’at Shamayim.
And this is indeed a most difficult art to master. The Talmud in Masechet Berachot relates the blessing that Rabban Yohanan Ben Zakai conveyed to his students just before his death: "May it be His will that the fear of God shall be upon you like the fear of mortals." The students, upon hearing their great Rabbi’s blessing, felt shortchanged. Is this the extent of his wishes for them? Shouldn’t they aspire to fear God far more than they fear other human beings?
Rabban Yohanan explained to them that fearing God like we fear others is itself a lofty aspiration. We all commit sins, and when we do we look around to make sure nobody sees us. Even though we are fully aware that God looks down and observes everything we do, we don’t want other people observing our wrongdoing. Because we do not actually see or perceive God with our senses, it is easy for us to overlook His presence. We are naturally afraid of those we can hear and see, but not of an invisible, intangible God.
Rav Elhanan Wasserman (1875-1941) explained that God created the world in this way in order to guarantee free will. We come into this world as unintelligent infants, such that by the time we are capable of understanding the concept of God and religious responsibility, we have already grown accustomed to life without recognition of God. This makes Yir’at Shamayim the difficult challenge that it is – so that we have the freedom to choose between right and wrong and thereby earn reward.
How, then, do we develop Yir’at Shamayim? If it is so difficult to fear a God whom we cannot perceive, then what can we do to engender this fear, which is the key to observing all the Misvot?
One answer is in regular study of Musar, reading books and hearing lectures that remind us of our religious duties. In the introduction to Mesilat Yesharim, one of the classic works of Musar, the author states that he does not intend to write in the book anything that the reader does not already know. Nevertheless, he wrote the book because the concepts it discusses must be regularly reviewed. We may draw an admittedly faulty analogy to a football team that huddles for a pep talk before the game. The coach does not teach the players any new strategies during the talk. He is not enlightening them with any new ideas of how to succeed in football. But he draws their attention and stirs their emotion, so that they focus on the task at hand. Le’havdil, studying Musar serves the same purpose. We need constant, daily reminders – even if it is just fifteen minutes a day – of our obligations to God, so that we live each day with true Yir’at Shamayim and a sense of religious duty.
In addition, we must seize the moments of inspiration that we experience. When we find ourselves infused with a sense of Yir’at Shamayim, we must not let that opportunity pass us by. Those are moments to capitalize upon, by making reasonable commitments to increase our observance and our involvement in Misvot.
The more we can develop our Yir’at Shamayim, the more keys we will have in our possession with which to unlock the doors to the rest of what Moshe describes in the verses cited above: "to walk in all His ways, to love Him, to serve Hashem your God with all your heart and all your soul, to observe the Misvot of Hashem and His statutes that I command you this day."
