Dealing with FEAR...a pre-Geula meditation

9 Nisan 5780

Sorry, I can't find the source of this magnificent picture of our future Holy Temple, may it be rebuilt soon!

  
Some very appropriate words for us today, and every day, come from R' Itamar Schwartz, the author of Bilvavi Mishkan Evneh (בלבבי משכן אבנה) (Building a Sanctuary in the Heart) in answer to a reader's question:

QUESTION:Is fear ever a good thing? For example, I live in a place in Eretz Yisrael where need to protect our cars from rocks that Arabs sometimes throw at our cars, and sometimes there are life-endangering situations here which cause us to have real fear. Is this a constructive kind of fear to have?

ANSWER: The only thing a person must ever be afraid of is the fact that he fears anything besides Hashem. That is something to be truly afraid of, and it is the only pure fear which exists. Either we fear Hashem Himself, or fear anything that is besides Hashem – which causes us to have the fears. Whenever we experience a fear, like when we feel fear from the Arabs, we should view it as an awakening to remind us that we are not afraid enough of Hashem, and that is why we have become afraid of something. It is an awakening to us that we are not close enough to Hashem; because if we would really feel close with Hashem, there would be no reason to fear anything.

Read the rest...then come back

I need this mussar too. This is every bit as much for me as it is for you, my precious readers.

We've had a lot of reasons thrown at us as to why we're not able to attend our batei knesset (synagogues/shuls) any longer. But we must think about this very important issue:

How much longer will HQB"H have to wait for His house, the Beit haMiqdash? It's His foothold into this world, and He wants to dwell among us here. As long as this issue isn't dealt with, He isn't happy. Think about how we would feel if we didn't have a place to live — and about those who actually have no place to live.

Do we respect our "miqdashim me'atim" more than we do His Holy Dwelling? Or even, as much? Not that we don't respect them at all — we should be grateful for these reminders of what we're missing, but we really shouldn't hold them above haShem's Bayit. At this period in history they've been delaying us from fulfilling His clearly-expressed will. So we can't attend them any more, for the time being.

No dwelling on earth is as important to the well-being of the earth and its inhabitants, both the Hebrew nation and the rest of the nations. No house, no apartment building, no synagogue, no school (beit midrash or yeshiva), and definitely not the Vatican, the United Nations building, or that European Parliament building that looks like a modern version of the Tower of Babel. Yet, we have neglected it since the state of Israel was founded - the only opportunity we've had in the last 2,000 years. How have we squandered this precious time? I hope it's not yet too late...

We need to deal with the people who have been preventing us from doing what needs to be done: 1) our enemies who are currently holding the land it sits on; and 2) our government, that until now discriminates against Jews by arresting only Jews for even appearing to be praying on the Temple Mount. Everyone else can do whatever they please, even desecrating the site with their secular activities. This needs to be stopped.

Or, we might wait until, maybe, G-d will deal with them via the coronavirus? He's already started by putting several government officials and their employees into quarantine, including our Health Minister (who has the virus, ironically) and our Prime Minister. And no one is on Har haBayit either, due to "King Corona."

I know we're the most traumatized people on the face of the earth (Rivka Levy once wrote about that, but I think it was on her now-deleted blog), but are we really that afraid of them that we can't deal with our "leadership," with G-d's help?

If we are, then we need to start thinking about how much we don't fear (not to mention, love!) Him, and how far away we are from Him.

Do we need proof from a Torah verse? The Shema Yisrael, which includes three Torah passages that we recite twice a day, is a good place to start. To begin with, everywhere in the passages that make it up where we see the word kol (כל - all), whether by itself or embedded in another word (as in, בכל, bechol, with all) we should take note of what it refers to, and whether we take them seriously enough.

That's enough for today. Thank you for reading, and engaging your neshama with me here.

Many thanks to Myrtle Rising for linking to R' Schwartz here.

Rav Schwartz's ebooks in English are to be found here. (He writes in Hebrew, so if you read it with understanding, you might want to start on the home page.)

May we all have a good Shabbat haGadol!