{"id":51810,"date":"2019-03-22T13:56:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-22T11:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=51810"},"modified":"2022-10-13T15:05:17","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T12:05:17","slug":"how-fear-becomes-awe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/how-fear-becomes-awe\/","title":{"rendered":"How Fear Becomes Awe"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[502,786,470],"acf":{"old_id":"51810","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":37918,"related_cahpter":"181","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"When our own selves cease to be the center of the world","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After a relatively brief evocation of the good fortune that awaits Israel should it obey God\u2019s laws, the chapter goes to great lengths to describe the disasters that will befall the people should they disobey. The text is so graphically brutal that one cannot help but wonder: Can it really be desirable for the Jewish people to worship God out of abject fear? <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The word \u201c<\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">yir\u2019ah<\/span><\/em><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d so central to biblical theology and spirituality, is conventionally translated as fear. But in fact it has a wide range of meanings: <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><em>yir\u2019ah<\/em> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">can convey the sense of fear, on the one hand, or of awe, on the other.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If fear and awe are so different, why does the same Hebrew word (<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">yir\u2019ah<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">) convey both? My teacher Bernard Steinberg once offered a powerful answer: \u201cAwe is what happens to fear when it stops being about me.\u201d When I fear God, in other words, I think about God\u2019s might and the ways it could impact upon me, but when I hold God in awe, I think only of God\u2019s might; thoughts of how it could affect me simply fall away. Fear becomes awe, then, when I forget about myself and focus only on God.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We can discern something similar, I think, in the biblical Hebrew word <\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">todah<\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. In contrast to modern Hebrew, where <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><em>todah<\/em> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">means thanks, in biblical Hebrew the primary meaning of <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><em>todah<\/em> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is praise, though it can convey a sense of thanksgiving as well. Indeed, in some biblical texts it is difficult to know whether to translate <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><em>todah<\/em> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">as thanks or praise.<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why does the same biblical Hebrew word convey both \u201cthanks\u201d and \u201cpraise\u201d? When I am thankful to God, I acknowledge God\u2019s generosity and its impact on me. When I praise God, however, I acknowledge God\u2019s generosity in and of itself. Thanks becomes praise when I forget about myself and focus only on God.<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In other words, fear is to awe as thanks is to praise: The former give way to the latter when I transcend myself and think only of God.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If one of the core goals of the religious life is to teach us that our interests and concerns ought not to be the exclusive center of our lives, then fear of punishment is something that must ultimately be minimized. As an alternative, Jewish tradition offers us awe, wherein we acknowledge Someone far greater than ourselves, and thus allow God\u2014and not our own egos\u2014to become the very center of our world.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Image by\u00a0Radoan Tanvir\u00a0from\u00a0Pixabay\u00a0<\/p>\n","image":{"ID":51812,"id":51812,"title":"dt28-awe","filename":"dt28-awe.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/dt28-awe.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/how-fear-becomes-awe\/dt28-awe\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"dt28-awe","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":51810,"date":"2019-03-22 11:55:46","modified":"2019-03-22 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