brief notes on Sh'mot

[cellio]

I'm reading from Sh'mot on Saturday morning, which means I need to say a few words about the portion. So I'm going to babble here in an effort to get some thoughts in order.

The reading begins with the (Hebrew) midwives defying Paro's order to kill newborn Jewish males. The reason given for their defiance is that they "feared God".

This makes me think of "fear" as in "fear of punishment" -- God will zap them if they don't defy Paro. But I don't think that kind of fear is necessary as a motivator; the midwives are Jewish, not Egyptian, and they are presumably people who are particularly interested in children to begin with, given that they're midwives. Do the chief midwives among the Jews need external motivation to avoid killing Jewish children?

The same root (yud-reish-alef) is used during the story of the Akeidah (the binding of Isaac); when the angel stops Avraham from killing his son, it is with the statement that Avraham "fears" God. But again, this is incongruous -- Avraham fears God and so is willing to kill his son? I would think there would be more fear involved in defying that order, not in following it.

It helps, sometimes, to read the Torah with the original Hebrew, a dictionary, and a concordance at hand. (I don't have this last yet, but online texts and search can help mitigate. But I digress.)

The answer, I think, is that this is not "fear of punishment". From what I've been able to determine, not actually being a Hebrew scholar, a better word is "awe". This root is used in cases where people are awed by God's power and truth -- in the case of the midwives this awe causes them to defy Paro; (an action that should cause them to fear for their lives), and in the case of Avraham it causes him to fulfill an undesired commandment.

Our tradition certainly records a system of conventional reward and punishment, which is included in the twice-daily Sh'ma. If we keep the commandments we'll flourish; if we don't we won't. But we aren't supposed to be motivated primarily by fear of punishment; we're supposed to follow God's commandments because he's God and we're his people. This idea is referred to in traditional sources as "yir'at hashamayim" -- "'fear' of heaven". There's that root again. :-)

There doesn't seem to be a lot of awe of God in today's world. Maybe we have to go looking for it. It doesn't have to come from big, flashy miracles; most of us go through life without ever seeing those. But it can come from smaller miracles too -- life, health, beauty around us, and so on.

I don't particularly "fear" God -- I mean, if he wants bad things to happen to me he can certainly do that and that's not fun, but I don't obsess about it. I try to look for opportunities for "awe", though -- by just paying attention, or by keeping the mitzvot.

I hope I'm never confronted with a test like Avraham and the midwives were. If I ever am, though, I hope I'll be able to act out of awe and not fear.

Ok, I'm babbling and I'm not sure where I'm going with this, so I'll stop for now.

Comments

[cellio]

Of course personally, I am a thousand times more fascinated by the colourful animals that live in the Red Sea, than that someone could part it, so the flashy miracles would probably be wasted on me anyway. :-}

I can just see it now: "Ooh, cool! Now I've got a really good view of these fishies! Oh, yeah, now that you mention it, it is kind of unnsatural that these walls of water are just standing here, isn't it? But what a great view!" :-)

[alice-curiouser.livejournal.com]

It would be like the National Aquarium in Baltimore! =D