Love and Fear-Awe / Ahava v yirah. from Alei Shur, by Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, pp

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1 Love and Fear-Awe / Ahava v yirah from Alei Shur, by Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, pp The Gemara (Yoma 86a) helps resolve the contradictions in those verses regarding repentance [teshuvah]. Here it was with love and here it was with fear. We could ask from this: is there any third type of approach to teshuvah and indeed to any other form of service? Apparently, whenever a person observes a commandment [mitzvah] or performs teshuvah, it is either because he is a believer, or that his intellect compels him in such a way. From this Gemara above, we find that there is no other reason for teshuvah, or indeed in keeping any of the mitzvot, except for those of love and fear. All of the reasons are simply subsumed under these two. How are we to understand this? Love and fear are two principal forces in a person that work within him since childhood. A child fears his father more than his mother, and he honors his mother more than his father because she wins him over with pleasant words (Rashi, beginning of Parshat Kedoshim). He loves and honors his mother, and he fears his father. Rambam explains the matter of love and fear in Hilchot Yesodei Hatorah, at the end of The Guide for the Perplexed and in Sefer Hamitzvot. He will guide us in understanding them. What is the path to love Him and fear Him? At the time when a person meditates on His deeds and His great and wondrous creations, he will see His wisdom that is infinite. Immediately, he loves and praises and has a great yearning to know His great name. As David said, my souls thirsts for the living G-d. And when he thinks of these specific things, he immediately recoils backwards, is in fear, aware that he is a small, lowly and dim creature standing with simple understanding before G-d of complete wisdom (Yesod Hatorah 2). This meditation instantaneously brings forth love and fear together. This meditation in not an abstract thought. It encompasses the person totally; intellect and emotion participate in it. Even bodily powers are silenced and impressed by it. When this meditation illuminates man with the wisdom of the Creator, the neshama and the body receive this light, each in its own manner. The neshama is the flame of G-d whose source is part of G-d above. Its essence is love and so immediately he loves, praises and has a great yearning to know His great name. The body receives the light of this meditation according to its essence and it recoils backwards and stands with its smallness before its Creator. The meditation is one, but its influence is split into two. The neshama desires closeness and the body recoils. We learn from this that the place of love is the neshama and the place of fear is in the body. Man exists composed of the

2 neshama and body and one without the other is impossible. Therefore, this composition exists even in the service of G-d. It is expressed with love and fear and it is impossible to have one without the other. Only through employing the two together can man achieve completeness [shleimut]. The Master [Rav Yerucham Levovitz] explains this matter from, There is no wisdom without fear and there can be no fear without wisdom. There is no beginning and continuation, rather the two together make a living man. The neshama contains wisdom and the place of fear is in the body. Having established this foundation, it is incumbent upon us to comprehend how the Torah directs us to love and to fear. And here the Rambam guides us as well in The Guide for The Perplexed (3; 52). Hashem has already explained that the entire purpose in Torah study is completely for taking action. That is to say, to fear Him and His word. As it says, If you do not safeguard to perform all the words of this Torah, written in this book, to fear the honored and exalted name of Hashem your God. Meditate upon how it was explained to you, that there was one final purpose in all these Torah words; which is to fear Hashem who is honored and to be awed. This purpose of knowing Him is reached through actions as indicated in the verse, If you do not safeguard to perform. This explains that it will be reached through those deeds we are commanded to perform and those from which we are to refrain from doing. The concepts that the Torah teaches us, however, that are the grasping of His existence and unity, these we will learn from love. The wording the Torah offers regarding love is, and you should love your G-d with all your heart and all your soul and all your might. These two purposes of love and fear will manifest from these two approaches. Love will come through Torah concepts including grasping the existence of Hashem and the truth in Torah. Fear will arise through Torah related actions, as we have explained. This is how the Torah builds a complete person. Torah actions are devoted to the body tefillin is placed on the head and on the arm, and tzizis on his clothing. The Sefer Chareidim enumerates all the mitzvot corresponding to the body part upon which it takes place. Torah concepts to love God are learned by the neshama, as does the intellect that is included within it. Thereby, a person builds his inner world through love and his outer world through mitzvah performance. Woe [oy] is that person who does not possess that inner world where he lives, just he and his Creator. But greater woe [oy va voy!] to that person who had not built his external world and neglects his body and its inherent needs! Only through building both these world together can he become complete.

3 His internal world, built from love, and his external world, from fear. It is the internal and external together that build a complete person. (translated by Robert Barris)

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