The Fear That Saves You

By Rabbi Moshe Krieger, Yeshivas Bircas HaTorah (www.bircas.org) (www.bircas.org)

“You are standing here today, all of you, before Hashem your God” (Devarim 29:9). Rashi explains that Moshe said this right after the long list of curses in last week’s parsha. The people had just heard everything terrible that could happen to them, and they were frightened. So Moshe reassures them: look, you’ve sinned so many times already, and you’re still standing here. Don’t worry.

What exactly is Moshe telling them? Is he saying the curses aren’t real? Is he telling the people not to take them so seriously?

Rav Leib Chasman answers: chas v’shalom — God forbid. The curses are true. If you sin, you get punished. But he asks a sharp question: what is the punishment actually for? It’s to bring a person to feel it, so that he does teshuvah — repentance — and fix his ways. So if a person already feels that fear just from hearing about the curses, without ever living through them, and that fear alone brings him back, then Hashem doesn’t need to actually carry them out. The fear already did the job the punishment was supposed to do.

There’s a flip side to this, a few pesukim later. The Torah describes a different kind of person. He hears the very same curses, and instead of being shaken, he tells himself: “I’ll be fine — I’ll just go the way my heart wants anyway” (Devarim 29:18). The very next pasuk says something very strong: Hashem “will not forgive him” (Devarim 29:19).

Rav Leib Chasman asks: What happened to this man? He heard the very same curses everyone else heard, and he certainly believed them. The Ibn Ezra explains what he was thinking: most people listen to Hashem, he figured, so if I slip a little, Hashem surely won’t mind. He wasn’t afraid enough — and so his desire took over. This, says Rav Leib Chasman, is a rule for every one of us. It’s not that some people have desires and others don’t. Every single person has them — maybe different desires, but everyone has something. A person can be careful and good for a long time, doing everything the right way, and then one day a desire shows up strong enough to overpower all of that, and it takes over.

The only thing that pulls a person away from that is real fear of Hashem — yiras shamayim, fear of Heaven. Not fear of what other people will say, but a genuine feeling: Hashem is right here, Hashem sees me, Hashem can hold me accountable for this. When that feeling is strong enough, it stops a person before he acts.

We see this by Avimelech. He took Sarah, thinking she was only Avraham’s sister. Afterward he asks Avraham why he didn’t tell him that she was his wife? He never would have taken her. Avraham answers, “I said, surely there is no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife” (Bereishis 20:11). Avraham is telling him: I couldn’t say the truth, because without real fear of Hashem, your desire would have been strong enough to make you kill me for her.

Rav Elchonon Wasserman explained this pasuk to a group of rabbanim in Europe, a few years before the war. He told them: of course Avimelech and his people had fine middos — character traits. But even in a place with real refinement, culture, and good manners, none of that helps without yiras shamayim. All the education in the world, all the fine manners, will not stop a person once his desire is truly tested — only fear of Heaven can do that. The rabbanim in the room didn’t understand what he meant. It became clear only later. The Germans were as cultured and well-mannered as any nation in the world, and they murdered Jews like animals. Good manners, education, fine middos — none of it can hold a person back once his desire is truly tested. Only real fear of Hashem can do that.

So how does a person build this fear? It takes real work. It’s davening with kavanah — concentration — actually feeling that you’re speaking to Hashem, not just saying words. It’s doing mitzvos lishmah — for Hashem’s sake. It’s learning mussar — Torah teachings on character and closeness to Hashem — and really asking yourself, before you do something: is this what Hashem wants from me?  Turning it over, thinking about Hashem, again and again, bit by bit. This kind of thinking builds a real yiras shamayim — the kind you can actually lean on when you need it.

We are in the middle of Elul: it’s almost Rosh HaShanah. This is exactly the time to work on this fear. Rav Dessler brings the Reishis Chochmah that says that fear is the key to teshuvah. How does that work? If a person’s sins come from desire, fear is the only thing that can control it, as we just said. But even when the sins aren’t coming from desire — when they’re coming from the people around him, from bad habits, from laziness, from just not thinking enough — Rav Dessler explains that this, too, comes from not feeling Hashem enough. If a person felt that Hashem was right there with him, all of that would change.

The Rema, at the very start of Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 1:1), says that when a person sits in front of a king, everything about him is different — how he moves, how he speaks, how he carries himself. He feels the king is right there in front of him. It’s the same with living together with Hashem. When you really feel that Hashem is with you, you don’t act the same way — even your habits change. I can’t do certain things with a king standing right here in the room.

Besides that, the Gemara says that the main avodah of Rosh Hashanah is to accept malchus Shamayim, Heaven’s kingship: “kedei shetamlichuni aleichem” — so that you should crown Me as your King (Rosh Hashanah 16a). But what does it mean to really accept Him as King? It’s not a king sitting back on his throne, far away. It’s a king who is right here with you, in your own house. All through the Aseres Yemei Teshuvah we say that He is the King of judgment — a King who is doing mishpat, judgment, in the world, every single minute. Feeling that — Hashem is right here, and He is judging right now — that’s a real acceptance of His Kingship, and it’s the main work of Rosh Hashanah.

This is also why we blow the shofar every day now. As the pasuk in Amos says (3:8), “If a shofar is sounded in a city, will the people not tremble?” The shofar is meant to build a strong feeling of yirah.

But these days are also a time of simcha. Rav Chaim Friedlander says that Hashem gave us these special days before the judgment, to prepare ourselves, to work on our yirah and our teshuvah. These are also days of great rachamim (mercy). At this very time of year, back in the wilderness, Hashem completely forgave the sin of the Golden Calf and accepted Klal Yisrael’s teshuvah. From then on, this became a time of special rachamim and a time that Hashem wants to bring us close to him. Hashem is ready to accept any teshuvah we do, and even if we only start a little, He helps us do the rest. It’s a special time, and we have to understand what a great opportunity it is.

There’s a story about Reb Itzele Blazer. Whenever Elul came, he would open the Aron Kodesh in his congregation and start crying. He said, “I thank You, Hashem, so much, for giving us Elul and Rosh Hashanah, that we’re able to do teshuvah.” He said we should accept Elul with simcha — with great happiness and love. He said this out loud, in front of his whole congregation, and he started crying, and everyone cried together with him.

These are special precious days. We should appreciate them and work the whole time building our  yirah and teshuvah.

May we be zocheh to do teshuvah sheleimah — a complete repentance — and may Hashem bless us with a good, blessed year.