The True Meaning of Fear - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

right the word in this verse for fear and most of the times in the Torah the fear is used is Tira now the tough at the beginning is affixed to the beginning to signify future tense meaning you shall fear but the root word as you see here is you're up Tabitha flashed that up very quickly let's see if we can get that back up there you'd race aleph which means to see that's what really the word fear means when it's used almost all of the time um Hashem is called the fear of Isaac and the word the conventional fear is used there but most of the time that's what it is you're up and that cuts to the root of it the word really is a mistranslation but the translation is used for the same reason that I begrudgingly often use it myself and that's because the conventional fear that we often think about is a natural consequence of seeing of beholding right the word that the word actually means seeing beholding with with your eyes on some level scene and I'm going to try to explain to you what I mean when I was early on in my relationship with Hashem in my journey which is really I think if I had to trace it back some people ask me when did I become a bald chuva when did I start my chuva process because I wasn't raised in a family that we kept the laws of Sabbath so the conventional understanding is when did I start keeping the Sabbath and that's when I became religious but really it was much more before that and I really have to trace it back to when I started thinking that's really when the relationship with when Hashem started at least the intellectual conscious relationship with Hashem maybe before then it was even more profound than that it was beyond faith but when I started thinking and I came to believe at some point when I was 13 14 15 um you know I was internalizing the truth of Hashem that he runs the world it was a different understanding of Hashem he wasn't as much infused it was more like you know I had the rabbi of my synagogue he was like 6'4 and he was this good loving kind man massive giant and when I pictured I shot I sort of pictured this rabbi's face in the sky I wish I brought a picture of this Rabbi his name is Rabbi Joseph radinski if anyone wants to Google him at some point just to see you could see the righteousness on him I really miss him his memory be a blessing but anyways at that age it was like it was a fear of consequence that I'd be punished for my sins both in this world and in the next but the more my relationship grew and evolved the deeper and more profound my understanding of the Torah and Hashem became and therefore the fear didn't it didn't go away but instead of a fear of punishment it became a fear of Detachment now I know this is nothing new for most of you you know this this is sort of basic but it's sometimes good to go back to the basics so it became a fear of Detachment the fear of violating a relationship that was becoming the most intimate and profound relationship of my life it became a fear that can be likened to what a child psychologists call separation anxiety right most of us have parents have seen it in our own children I'm bracing myself not successfully I'm like dreading within someone in the next two weeks uh DeVos is going to be starting a new kindergarten and what I imagine will happen is what I remember happening the first day of the gun that she went to last year she showed up and she saw the toys and the other kids and she was excited and she ran in and she was playing and then you know we were sort of taking cautious steps backwards to slip out and she saw us leaving and she ran towards us you've seen it right you know what I'm talking about she embraced us and she cleaved on to us crying Jazz as not to leave and it was just heartbreaking heartburn I cried from the whole thing um Shayna was a little bit more stoic but Shane is more more stoic than me she's stronger than me and so while it's often referred to as a phenomenon in child psychology if you dig deep enough to the very core of our soul I think we should simply just call it psychology because we all have that fear of Separation deep within us even I don't know what child psychology is even a thing because I think each of us if we're really self-aware and conscious the child is still alive within us that's why I remember they say about Sarah that she was uh seven years and 20 years in a hundred years because yeah she was 127 years old but that seven-year-old Sarah was still there you know it was still there within her and so we have that all within us if we're aware of it and and honest about it and and so at least I do and and so that's separation that that's the fear that I have that fear of losing our connection with our creator with our Father in heaven and I can honestly say that I can't remember the last time I even thought about the consequences of anything in the afterlife I just don't think about it and most of the of my friends of my spiritual mentors also don't think about don't think about it my greatest fear is the Detachment you know Hashem operates with us one of the facets of the relationship is uh is a relationship Dynamic of media connected me the attribute for attribute and if we violate the Integrity of our relationship with him if we distance ourselves from him then he loves us right he allows us to have the perception that he's not with us in and that loneliness that disconnection that we've all felt I believe we've I shouldn't speak for everybody but I've certainly felt it if you felt that before raise your hand okay so that's that's that's most of us that feeling of of alienation uh by the way our beloved Stephanie so beautifully and vulnerability and vulnerable shared with us in the last Fellowship connection her experience about that and she was in tears about it it was so raw and so real and uh you know it's one of the most painful experiences I think in The Human Condition