It is critical to understand that
everything depends on the level of fear of Hashem that one feels. Not just fear that He is going to punish you [that is a low level fear] but fear of His exaltedness. One can only
acquire the true Torah if he has the requisite fear. והאלקים עשה שיראו מלפניו [Koheles 3/14]. Hashem created the whole world for the sake of
this middah of Yirah. People only started forgetting Torah when there was a
diminishing of fear [see Temurah 16a כי אפליג בה בסוף שניה דבצר לביה].
The entire Maamad Har Sinai took place in order to inspire
fear – למען תהיו יראתי על
פניכם לבלתי תחטאו.
When one is afraid of anything, the fear
will not be greater than what one is fearing. A rational person will not fear
death with such force than it is more than the actual pain of death itself. The
fear of not having fear of Hashem, however, far exceeds anything imaginable. It is the
fear of the endless of abyss of nothingness. Without fear, there is no Torah and
no life. That is why the fear relates to the heart. The mind, the intellect,
cannot relate to something so lofty that far exceeds the narrow confines of
this world. Only the heart can contain such a massive concept.
Every day we say in the bracha asking
for Torah ויחד לבבנו לאהבה
וליראה את שמך – -
unify our heart to love and fear your name [see the next post]. This fear must be in the heart because that is
where fear is and that is the basis for the Torah.
Any Torah without Yiras Shomayim is
not Torah. It might look good and sound good but it is not Toras Emes.
I recently saw on the website of a
certain yeshiva that they feature the shiurim of a rabbi who was found guilty
by a court of law and also a panel of rabbonim of inappropriate behavior with
his [male] students.
Torah must be accompanied with
exemplary behavior and yiras shomayim. אם הרב דומה למלאך השם צב-אות יבקשו תורה מפיהו.
[עי' במי מרום חי"ג עמ' פ"ה דברים נשגבים ועליהם התבססתי]
לזכות גילה שושנה בת נעכא גיטל לברכה והצלחה בכל
