Yom Kippur: The Fear That Comes From Love

The Superpower of Each Holiday

Yom Kippur begins at the start of next week, and this Shabbos is Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbos between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur whose whole theme is that the rabbi is supposed to give a derashah about getting ready for Yom Kippur. So this week, Rabbi Adi turned to an idea for getting us ready for Yom Kippur.

Last week's shiur was about Rosh Hashanah, and Rabbi Adi brought the Derech Hashem, the Ramchal he often quotes: that every single holiday has a special koach, a special energy, a special superpower, and it is our responsibility to figure out how to tap into it. He gave the analogy he likes to give, though he jokes that when he tells it to college students now, they do not understand it at all. In Super Mario Brothers, on the old Nintendo, there were hidden tunnels: if you knew which one to press down into, you could skip a bunch of levels. That is what each of the holidays is. If you know how to use the holiday, it is a superpower that lets you skip a bunch of levels.

And what did we say Rosh Hashanah is? The time we are in is a little confusing: Selichos started over a week beforehand, and in the Selichos we are focused on teshuvah, and then Rosh Hashanah comes in the middle of it, and there is a pause. We said that Rosh Hashanah is the creation of man. Man was created on that day, and man is filled with potential, and that is what life is all about. Life is fulfilling potential. It is not just existing in the world, not just megurim, but the opportunity to grow and develop into the best possible version of ourselves. We spoke about how that drive is innate in the Jewish people; we see it in so many examples of how Jews are overachievers. And ultimately, on Rosh Hashanah we are not focusing on the details of what happened this past year. We are really focusing on the future: on what it is that we can bring to the table, to Hashem's kingdom. Rosh Hashanah celebrates that Hashem is a Melech, that He runs the kingdom of the world, and we are all talking about our value proposition: what we can bring to the world and how we are going to actualize it, based on where we live, our profession, our knowledge, everything we bring, to make our families, our communities, Israel, and the Jewish people better and better and better.

Yom Kippur is very different. We generally group Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur together, but it is not that at all. So the question is: what is Yom Kippur?

Revealed Through History

The superpower of Rosh Hashanah we learned from the creation of the world. But the superpower of Yom Kippur was not revealed then. The Derech Hashem says that for some days, we learn what is so amazing about that specific day in the calendar throughout history: based on what happened to the Jewish people, the day eventually reveals itself, because we have a cyclical calendar. So when was the concept of Yom Kippur revealed? Much later on. It was really revealed by the forgiveness of the golden calf. We know the story: the Jewish people receive the Torah. Moshe goes up to get the Torah. Hashem tells everybody the first two of the Aseres HaDibros, the Ten Commandments, out loud. They all perish; they are revived. Then Moshe is up there receiving the Torah the rest of the time, and as he comes down: the eigel, the golden calf. And ultimately, on Yom Kippur, the Jewish people were forgiven for the big mistake that they made, and that is the day that taught us the power of Yom Kippur.

But here is an interesting question. The Gemara in Maseches Nedarim (39b) says that one of the things created before the world even existed is the concept of teshuvah, repentance:

שִׁבְעָה דְבָרִים נִבְרְאוּ קוֹדֶם שֶׁנִּבְרָא הָעוֹלָם, וְאֵלּוּ הֵן: תּוֹרָה וּתְשׁוּבָה

Seven things were created before the world was created, and these are they: Torah, and teshuvah…

And if you look at the Torah itself, before we ever get to the golden calf, teshuvah is already there. Kayin and Hevel: two brothers, and one kills the other. And Kayin did teshuvah. So did Adam HaRishon when he was sent out of Gan Eden. The Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah) tells that Adam HaRishon met up with Kayin and asked him: what exactly happened after you killed your brother? And Kayin said: I was going to be killed by Hashem, and ultimately I did teshuvah, and my punishment was reduced. Instead of dying, I was banned, and I had to wander for seven generations. And immediately, the Midrash says, Adam also did teshuvah, for the mistake he made in eating from the Eitz HaDaas, the Tree of Knowledge, and he was allowed to live 930 years, but he was banished from Gan Eden. So the concept of teshuvah clearly existed long before Yom Kippur. What makes the teshuvah of Yom Kippur so different?

A New Kind of Teshuvah

Yom Kippur is a completely different type of teshuvah, because of what happened right before it. At Matan Torah, the giving of the Torah, the Jewish people heard directly from Hashem: Anochi Hashem Elokecha, I am Hashem your G-d. And the story goes that parchah nishmasam, their souls flew out of them. They all perished. It was impossible for them to be alive after they heard such truth, everything straight from Hashem, and Hashem had to revive them. And then Hashem said again, the second commandment, that you shall not serve other gods, and again they passed away, and again they were revived. Reaching that pinnacle of understanding of Hashem, by hearing directly from Him, changed our relationship with Hashem forever and ever.

From this point in time, teshuvah was no longer only something that would reduce the punishment. In the times of Adam HaRishon and Kayin, teshuvah was like a negotiation. They did something really bad; they were supposed to die; they did teshuvah, and there was a negotiation. Fine, you will not die: Kayin, you are going to be banned to wander for seven generations. Adam, you will live 930 years, but you cannot be in Gan Eden anymore. Instead of death being the penalty, the penalty became something else: instead of X, you get Y. But once we had this relationship with Hashem, after we heard the first two Dibros from Hashem Himself, teshuvah became something entirely different: the ability to regain the same exact spiritual standing that we had beforehand. Not a middle stage, not a reduced sentence: we are able to get back to the same exact status that we started with. And this is true both as individuals and as a nation.

The power of Yom Kippur is so strong that the Gemara in Yoma (85b) records a debate about whether a person even needs to do teshuvah at all. One opinion holds that Yom Kippur itself, the day together with the avodah (the service of the sacrifices), is such an amazing day that you do not even have to do anything. Now, we are of the opinion that you also have to do teshuvah, that you also have to repent. But you see from this what an amazing day Yom Kippur is, a day we are supposed to approach with both excitement and seriousness. The Mesillas Yesharim, and many, many others, say that the concept of teshuvah is a miracle. There are tons and tons of texts trying to explain how it could be: you did something negative, you repent, and what was done is able to be completely forgotten. With us fallible human beings, if somebody wrongs us, if somebody steals from us, and then afterwards comes crying and says, I am never going to do this ever again, you say: I accept your apology. But you are going to be extremely careful with that person in the future, never to leave him alone in your house, because he may steal something again. But with Hashem, if we do teshuvah properly on Yom Kippur, it is as if nothing happened at all.

So Rosh Hashanah was focused on the future: deciding what we stand for, how we want to live, how we want to work hard. Yom Kippur is completely different. On Yom Kippur we are not focusing on the future; rather, we want to ensure that the sins we did, the mistakes we had, the regrets we may have from the previous year, are wiped completely clear, so that they will not hamper us from accomplishing all the amazing things we are planning on doing this coming year. And if we do it properly, it is wiped completely, completely clean. Chazal tell us there are different steps to do this. Viduy: we have to confess, to speak out loud the things that we did and admit them. Charatah: we have to genuinely feel bad about them. And kabbalah al ha'ba: we commit that we are not going to do this again in the future, that we want to be a better person. Those steps are very important for the day. But Rabbi Adi wanted to focus on something more macro, a concept that comes up constantly on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and really throughout the Jewish calendar: What is Yiras Hashem, fearing G-d? There is the fear people talk about on Yom Kippur (am I going to be forgiven?), and there is the concept we are constantly taught, that we should have a fear of Hashem. What exactly does that mean?

The Question of Fear

Rabbi Adi described the army experience he runs every year for his students in Israel: American college kids, very, very good kids, most of whom have never really had many tough things happen to them in their lives. They are brought to a training facility in the center of Israel for a thirty-six-hour taste of the army. It begins the moment the bus arrives: before anyone can start collecting their bags, the mefaked (the commander) runs onto the bus, grabs the microphone, and announces: fifteen seconds to get out and make two lines. The students have no idea what is going on. No warning. He starts yelling: fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, and they cannot get off within fifteen seconds. Then he yells at them to run down to the tree and back (they still do not know what is even going on), and he yells at the top of his lungs until eventually they all start running. Then back on the bus, and fifteen seconds to get off again. And it goes on and on: running, push-ups, for a couple of hours. At night he tells them to go to sleep (no phones, of course), and thirty-five minutes after they all fall asleep, he wakes them, brings them outside, more push-ups. After that, none of the students sleep all night long, because they are scared they will be woken up at any moment. At 3:30 they are woken again and taken on a long walk. And then, toward the end of the thirty-six hours of being treated like this by the mefaked they now have tons of fear for, comes what the army calls shvirat distance, breaking the distance: the mefaked gathers them in a circle and, for the first time, relates to them as a person, tells them who he is. He usually joins them for all of Shabbos too, and then they have a relationship. But the point is very clear: when you put a sense of fear into somebody else, it does not create positive sentiments. It does not create a strong relationship and connection.

Rabbi Adi saw the same thing in his own yeshiva. The Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Berkowitz, was extremely warm and extremely nice, the kind of person who likes to say yes to everything. And then there was the menahel, the one running the yeshiva, whose job, basically, was to be very strict: you have to show up at this time, and if you walked into his office, he would say, why are you here? He was a gatekeeper, and he did his job very, very well. But when you talk to people about the relationships they had in yeshiva, they will tell you about the Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Berkowitz; they will tell you about their Rosh Chaburah, the people they were with in their morning classes. No one says they had a relationship with the menahel. Because even though that was his job, and he did a phenomenal job at it, he created fear. And fear does not create closeness.

So if that is the case, why do we speak of Yiras Hashem, fearing Hashem? Ultimately, we should all love Hashem. We should be as close as possible to Him. And yet throughout the tefillos of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, this is what we constantly say:

וּבְכֵן תֵּן פַּחְדְּךָ ה׳ אֱלֹקֵינוּ עַל כָּל מַעֲשֶׂיךָ... וְיֵעָשׂוּ כֻלָּם אֲגֻדָּה אֶחָת לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹנְךָ בְּלֵבָב שָׁלֵם

And so, place Your fear, Hashem our G-d, upon all Your works… and let them all form a single band, to do Your will with a whole heart.

Hashem should place fear upon us and upon everything He created, and the very same prayer continues that all should come to do His will with a whole heart. That seems like a complete contradiction. If you are in fear of somebody, how is it possible to serve them with your entire heart? And even more so on Yom Kippur: one of the ways we attain the forgiveness we are looking for is through viduy, stating out loud all of the mistakes that we made. Think about that. If you wanted to create a good relationship with somebody, and that person told you: the way we are going to create a good relationship together, and the way I am going to love you even more, is: first and foremost, please stand in front of me, bend down, take your hand and smack yourself across your heart, tell me all the mistakes you made, and start crying and feel horrible about them. Does that seem like a potion for creating a relationship with somebody? Or does that seem like a way to emotionally destroy a person? If Hashem fully loves us and wants us as close as possible, why would He tell us that the way to do teshuvah is through viduy, crying as we say all of the mistakes that we made? Why would we want a concept of Yiras Hashem at all? It would seem to be the exact opposite of closeness.

And the difficulty sits right there at Matan Torah itself, which is what Yom Kippur is all about. They heard the first two of the Aseres HaDibros, they passed away, they were revived, and they say to Moshe Rabbeinu: enough, we cannot do this anymore. And the answer that comes back is:

אַל־תִּירָאוּ כִּי לְבַעֲבוּר נַסּוֹת אֶתְכֶם בָּא הָאֱלֹקִים וּבַעֲבוּר תִּהְיֶה יִרְאָתוֹ עַל־פְּנֵיכֶם לְבִלְתִּי תֶחֱטָאוּ

Do not be afraid, for G-d has come in order to elevate you, and in order that His fear should be upon your faces, so that you do not sin. (Shemos 20:17)

Do not be scared. That makes a lot of sense. Hashem does not want us to be scared of Him. But then look at the reason: do not be scared… so that His fear will be upon your faces. They should not be scared, so that they should be scared? What is going on in this pasuk?

What Love Is

Look at what Hashem really wants. He constantly tells us that He loves us and wants us to be closer. In the Chumash, Hashem counts us multiple times, over and over and over again, and Chazal tell us the reason why: just as a person counts their money, Hashem is counting us. In davening we say Ahavah Rabbah, with an abounding love You have loved us. On every one of the holidays we say:

אַתָּה בְחַרְתָּנוּ מִכָּל הָעַמִּים, אָהַבְתָּ אוֹתָנוּ וְרָצִיתָ בָּנוּ

You chose us from all the peoples; You loved us and wanted us.

You chose us. You want us. You love us. And as we read in the haftorah, Hashem loves us the way a chassan loves his kallah:

וּמְשׂוֹשׂ חָתָן עַל־כַּלָּה יָשִׂישׂ עָלַיִךְ אֱלֹקָיִךְ

And as a groom rejoices over his bride, so will your G-d rejoice over you. (Yeshayahu 62:5)

Rabbi Adi brought a story from Rabbi YY Jacobson. Rabbi Jacobson was once traveling in Iowa and bumped into an Israeli professor, and they talked for a while. The professor asked him: have you ever gone to the Rebbe at 770? Of course, he said. And you? And the professor told him about the one time he went. He was excited to go to the Rebbe to ask him a question, and this was the question: Rabbi, I know what a rabbi is, but I do not know what a Rebbe is. The Lubavitcher Rebbe thought for a second, and then he responded: a Rebbe is a friend. The professor was pretty upset. I do not know what you are talking about, he said. I have many friends, but I do not have a Rebbe. So the Rebbe said: well, maybe your definition of a friend and my definition of a friend are different. You probably define a friend as somebody you want to go to the bar with, play pool with, maybe go to a baseball game with, maybe even a football game; maybe you can have a nice Friday night meal together. My definition of a friend is a little different. Actually, very different. A friend is somebody who cares so much for you that you can open up with them about everything. You can be completely vulnerable; you can cry together and open up your heart, and you will get support from this person. And you know that once you finish talking to him, he is not going to think one iota different about you afterwards, and he will still be there for you, one hundred percent. Because that is what a Rebbe is. And he asked: do you have any friends like this? The professor said no. That, said the Rebbe, is what a real friend is.

And that, Rabbi Adi said, is also love. What is love? Loving somebody, in the truest sense, is that no matter what you share, no matter what you say to them, that person will not look differently at you in any way, shape, or form. And that is our relationship with Hashem, a hundred times more than what the Rebbe said to that Israeli professor. We are Hashem's flesh and blood. We are a chelek Elokah mima'al, a portion of G-d from above. We came directly from Hashem, and we can share everything with Hashem. And not only will He not look negatively at us. What He will do is help guide us and be there for us all the time. On a practical level, the way we feel this most is with our children or our grandchildren. Even if they are having a tough time, even if they are going through something that is uncomfortable to talk about, something they feel will bring shame, and may even bring a little bit of shame to the parents, we want them to tell us everything, because we want to be able to be there to guide them and help them in the best possible way. That is what love is. Loving somebody is that you are going to be there for them no matter what, and you are going to want to help them.

Two Kinds of Yirah

So what is Yiras Shamayim, fear of Heaven? There are two types of fear. There is the fear we use in the vernacular, colloquially: the fear the mefaked creates with the people in his unit. That fear creates a sense of distance. And there is another type of yirah, which is probably what we are referring to when we say Yiras Shamayim. Here Rabbi Adi brought a strong analogy, again from Rabbi YY Jacobson, to help elucidate the point. Imagine the most amazing couple. They are completely in love. They get married; they start building a family. They never argue. Every single night they have dinner together as a family, with the most ideal children. There is no negativity between the two of them; husband and wife help each other solve each other's problems: the epitome of what a perfect marriage is. And one day, the man has to go off for work. He has a meeting with a company in a remote place in the mountains, and he sits with this company by himself for a couple of hours. After the meeting is finished, the company flies out on their private plane, and he cannot get onto a flight until the next day. So he takes a hotel room, and he goes to the local small pub. He is sitting there unwinding; he has a beer, he has a second beer. And all of a sudden, the most gorgeous woman that ever existed comes and sits next to him. While he is drinking, she starts flirting with him, she says one thing, she says another thing, and he is not really trying to talk to her too much. And then eventually, after flirting so much, she says it straight out to him: please come with me to my room.

And he has a yetzer hara. He is being told to maybe follow her. And he is scared. He is scared; he does not know what to do. But think about what he is scared of. He is not scared of his wife finding out. He is not scared of friends finding out. They are in the most remote location; this woman is completely random; they have not even exchanged names. There is no chance that anybody would ever find out anything. There is no fear of being caught at all. So what does he fear? He fears not anybody else; he fears hurting the relationship that he has with his wife. He will never be able to forgive himself if he goes to that room. Even if nobody will ever know what happened, he will know what happened. And for the rest of his life, he will feel that he hurt that amazing relationship that he has with his wife: the relationship that is getting stronger and stronger, the love that is only growing. There is no way he is going into that room, because he has a fear of losing that beautiful relationship.

That, says Rabbi YY Jacobson, is what Yiras Hashem is. It is not that we are scared of Hashem. It is that we are scared of losing the most meaningful relationship that we can possibly have in our lives: the relationship with the Ultimate Creator, who loves us unconditionally, and with whom we want to get as close as possible.

And that could be exactly what the pasuk at Matan Torah means. When they are revived and say to Moshe, no more, the answer is al tira'u: they should not be scared. Not the fear that causes distance; Hashem does want that beautiful, amazing relationship. But so that His fear will be upon your faces: the only fear they should have is the fear of the relationship dissipating in any way, shape, or form. They should want it to get stronger and stronger and stronger. The love is so strong that there is a fear that anything I may do even a little bit off is going to take me away from having that ultimate relationship. And that is exactly what we are saying in Uvechein tein pachdecha: Hashem, place this fear into us and into everybody else. Not the fear that creates distance, but the yirah that you may lose out if you do not embrace things in the most ideal way. If you do not try to connect, you will be missing out on what you are able to connect to.

Opening Up on Yom Kippur

And that is ultimately how we are supposed to view Yom Kippur. Why are we doing teshuvah? Why are we doing viduy and saying all of these things? Because we know that if we open up to Hashem, if we are able to get the things we feel not so great about off of our chest and reach out to Him, there is no fear that He is not going to embrace us for who we are and what we are going through. He is completely going to embrace us. The more we open up on Yom Kippur, the more we talk about the things we may have done that we are not so proud of from last year, the more Hashem will embrace us, and the more it will help us get rid of all the challenges that we had last year and free us to live the ultimate life that we laid out on Rosh Hashanah.

So if we did Rosh Hashanah properly, and now we do Yom Kippur properly, then hopefully we will have an unbelievably successful gmar chasimah tovah to end this year, and a year in which we accomplish so much, each of us individually, and so much together as well.