I'll bet you will be shocked to learn the commandment that occurs most often in the Torah and the Bible. Shocked!
No, it is not the mitzvah of tzedakah. And it is not the mitzvah of p'ru u'voo - be fruitful and multiply. It is not the mitzvah of success, or of style or popularity. It is not the mitzvah to place a loaf of bread on a dead body if you must move it on Shabbes (there really is such a mitzvah!). It is not the mitzvah to honor your parents, although I want every one of you to do that, and mean that, in the next twenty-four hours.
The commandment which occurs most frequently in our Hebrew bible - the commandment that is repeated most is al tirah, “Be not afraid.” Over 122 times in the Tanach God commands individuals and the whole Jewish people to not be afraid. God commands Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses on several occasions, Joshua before the battle of Jericho; the Israelites at the Red Sea, and when we were preparing for our first battle. God commands it to Jeremiah and other prophets who seek to flee from their assignment; and again to Jeremiah when he is writing to the exile community in Babylon. At every point of danger or destiny in the Tanach, God steps in and commands a person, a prophet or our people, “be not afraid.”
And what God commanded to them then, God is commanding us now. It is not just a commandment, it is our secret weapon: Do not be afraid.
In commanding our forefathers and foremothers, the community of the Exodus, and the community of the First Temple to be not afraid, God does not say that there are no real dangers in life, no failures, no betrayals, no losses, no grief, no sin. There were real dangers, real enemies and real burdens facing our ancestors. Pharaoh, Amalek, The Cannanites, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and after them the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Muslims, Crusaders, Cossacks, Nazis, Soviets, and now Jihadists-all of them were and are fearsome enemies. What God is commanding is not a naďve turning away from real dangers. This is just foolishness. No, what God is commanding us is something much more difficult, but much more enduring. God is telling us, commanding us to face and not fear these dangers. God is telling us not to be paralyzed by them. God cannot make the journey or each of its battles easy, but God can help us to nurture and teach, to hold and to lift up a level of courage that alone will help us complete the journey and win the battles. And what is the source of this courage? The source of the courage to not be afraid is God. The source of the courage to face each day is God. In God is hope; and hope gives us courage, and courage kills fear. Courage trumps fear. Courage is more powerful than fear because God is more powerful than death.
Without faith in God, without hope and courage we would never have left Egypt. It took the evidence of ten plagues to convince Israel that Ha Kadosh Baruch Hu was really God - yes, let me let you in on the secret they never taught you in Sunday School. The plagues were needed to convince Israel, not Pharoah. Once convinced, we followed Moses into the wilderness.
Without God and hope we would never have survived the Babylonian exile, we would never have endured medieval persecution and expulsions, we would never have made of our communal lives in Eastern Europe an edifice of compassion, justice and cohesion in the midst of a world so bent on our demonization that even popes had to defend us from the charges of causing the Black Plague by poisoning the European wells. Those Jews courageous and smart enough to flee Europe before the kingdom of night went where? To Palestine, where life was brutal and our presence unwelcome, to put it mildly. Hope was their companion.
Without God and hope we would not have come to these shores 351 years ago and built a new life with new synagogues to express a new version of the faith of our ancestors. Without God and hope we would not have cleared the swamps and built the kibbutzim and moshavim and towns of Eretz Yisrael. The hope of 2,000 years - ha Tikvah, as the Israeli national anthem is titled - is a hope built on the faith in God that we need not be afraid. All of Jewish history is just a tracing of the lines that flow from the commandment al tirah, be not afraid.
Ah, rabbi, you say: but we have so much to fear. Scientists are calculating the likelihood of an earth-destroying meteor. If global warming is a bad as the worst mathematical models are projecting, the monsoons will be unleashed, tidal waves will destroy California and the East Coast from Maine to South Carolina, and a new primordial jungle will cover the rest of North America.
Do I sound like Chicken Little? How about this, then: in 1813 the New Madrid Fault with its epicenter in Tennessee became unstable. The resulting earthquake was felt as far away as Washington, D.C. and Nevada. The Mississippi ran backwards and its course was changed forever. This was twice, at least, the potency of any California earthquake recorded, and like all earthquakes on active fault lines, it will happen again. Memphis, TN is right on its fault line. Then there is the Black Plague of 1347, which started as all plagues do, in Mongolia, carried by rats brought back to Europe by Marco Polo, that then was spread by fleabites and infected the lungs of two species ... pigs and humans. Yersinia Pestis is what the scientists call it. The plague was not the first or the last: there was one in the sixth century and another in Asia in the late 19th century. The 1347 experience was only the worst ... in today's terms it would kill within a season over 2 billion people, from princes and popes to slaves and serfs. And what of the great flu pandemic of 1918, which killed by several multiples more than all casualties of World War I, which it strangely interrupted. Estimated total deaths now are said to have been at least 40 million and perhaps as many as 100 million - rich and poor, city and rural, soldier or civilian, and for some strange reason, especially those otherwise in perfect health between the ages of 20 and 40. Again, the eyes of epidemiology are on central Asia. We are nearly obsessed with the danger of a new flu epidemic ... and give names to every new and unforeseen mutation: Asiatic Flu, Hong King Flu, Swine Flu, and now Avian Flu. One of them will strike and no vaccination will have anticipated its character.
But my friends we cannot stare in the face of those scientific truths and stay in the cave, never see the sun shine, never fall in love, never read or write poetry, never have children, never reach out and help another human soul ... we cannot surrender to fear. Fear would have kept us in the cave, indeed, it would have kept us in bed this very morning, it would have kept our eyes shut and our humanity surrendered. I say to you all: Be Prudent, of course. Be Careful, of course. But Be Not Afraid.
Those who chastise faith, who consider it an intellectual mistake, a crutch, a delusion, an opiate of the masses need to explain its prevalence in every human culture and its per durance though all human history. In our own time, it was faith and hope which scored against the dark regimes of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. It was faith and hope which restored American equilibrium after September 11. The cynics will have none of it - they simply say “There are no atheists in a foxhole.” They admit that when faced with the fear of battle, every soldier seeks faith as a crutch. What they do not understand in their snide canard is that we are always in a foxhole, and that if you are crippled by fear, you cannot walk even a single step without hope.
Let us speak about the foxholes of fear we are all in now and the courage we need to face this New Year.
We are afraid that we will also be the victims of yet another terrorist attack. All wars are different, but this war we are in today is utterly unique. In this war, we are not threatened by an invading army seeking to plant their flag on our hilltops, but by terrorists seeking to plant fear into our hearts. They believe that our fear will provoke a retreat they can never compel on the battlefield. They believe that our fear will cause us to believe that by giving in to what they describe as “legitimate” grievances we can eliminate the threat and the fear.
It worked for Hitler from 1938 until 1941 and the jihadists hope that this lie will work again today with new Chamberlains in new Munichs.
But we know what happened to the cause of appeasement to Hitler, and we know the true nature of their grievances now. Christopher Hitchens writing after the London bombings named their true grievances with furious eloquence, “The ”grievances“ of the jihadists are: The grievance of seeing unveiled women; the grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people; the grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law; the grievance of the domination of American economic success, which feeds half the world and is the dream address of the other half; the grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London; the grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won't abandon their lands in Darfur; the grievance of the existence of homosexuals; the grievance of music, and of most representational art; the grievance of the existence of Hinduism; the grievance of East Timor's liberation from Indonesian rule. All of these have been proclaimed as a license to kill infidels or apostates, non-believers or anyone who just gets in the way.”
God commands us to be not afraid! Today this means “be not afraid because you have no choice but to face a radically evil enemy.” Like Amalek, the biblical terrorist who attacked the weakest members of the Exodus in the rear of the line of the march, we must remember Amalek and blot out his name from under Heaven. Sometimes the only way to eliminate fear is utterly to defeat its cause.
There is a wonderful short story by Voltaire in which a fly is angered by the sound of a clock on the wall and decides to destroy “the monster.” The bug is a terrorist; it wants instant result from a single effort. So it decides to rush headlong into the clock like one of the suicide-bombers in our time. The result of the fly's attack on the clock is that the hands of the clock stop for only a tiny fraction of a second and then continue their relentless and regular counting of time as loud as ever. The suicide bug, however, falls to the floor, crushed and lifeless. A few moments later the cleaning lady sweeps the corpse into the dustbin of history. History shows what faith promises: terrorism can throw itself in suicidal rage against the clock of history, but it cannot stop the inexorable march of humanity to freedom and away from fear.
These new Amaleks and Hitlers believe what Amaleks and Hitlers have always believed: that our fear will convince us to give up everything so that we will be spared their murderous wrath. The only political, military, and spiritual question of any consequence in this new year is the question of whether they are right. Will we allow our fear to destroy our freedom? This is not a rhetorical question in a sermon. It is the central question of our age. And the answer to this question will come only in small measure from the bullets and courage of our soldiers, May they know only victory. The main answer will come from the courage of our neighbors, our children, and ourselves. Every morning that we rise and go to work or send our children to school, we rise to proclaim our decision to live the way we lived before the explosions of fear. And when we do so, we conquer our fear, we win this war, we defeat Amalek. Every morning, not on some dusty battlefield but right here and right now, we either win or lose this war.
Be not afraid.
And it is a message, a commandment for us here at the United Jewish Center of Danbury, the UJC. Be not afraid.
Yes, this community has endured bitter dissension and even convulsion. Other smaller and lesser congregations have proclaimed their intention to exploit the dissension of the UJC, to peel off its members alienated by distrust and disdain. We are asking for a new generation of leadership, a new core of dreamers and doers who will bring new luster and honor to the great name this congregation has. Some of our cherished programs now go untended, literally paralyzed by a lack of volunteer coordination, a fear of responsibility - Mitzvah Day is begging for you to come forward, so too the Outreach Committee, the Festival Committee, the Yom HaShoah Memorial Candle Project, the Ritual Committee which needs new vigor and the touch of a new generation, the Social Action Committee which struggles to justify “meetings” at which fewer than a handful attend. The list goes on - where are you? Do not be paralyzed by fear, my friends. At the Wizard says ... come forward! Be not afraid.
The recruitment of new UJC members is not a matter to be relegated to a committee, or to a rabbi or a cantor or a director of education. You are all, all of you, on that committee. You are all challenged to reach out and invite the uncommitted to become the newly committed to this, the great synagogue of western Connecticut. This is your home ... I ask each of you to invite a new friend over. Be not afraid.
And be not afraid in your very souls, my good and dear friends. Be not afraid.
Some here lie on a bed of pain or love someone so afflicted. Our Mishebeirach list is never short; this is our priority. Some will soon see the restoration of their health, but not only by the skill of their physicians - also by their own courage and hope. In the face of their challenge, I say to them every day, al tirah, be not afraid.
Others may indeed see the dreaded Black Angel before this year is out. And even to them I say, be not afraid, because God waits for you with the patient smile of eternity. Fight with every fibre for life, but know that the death of your body is not the death of you. Faith is not knowing what you did not know before. Faith is believing what you did not believe before. Chayeh Olam, as we say every time we bless the Torah, awaits us all - eternal life is at the end of the rainbow. Be not afraid.
At the time of King David's rule over a united Israelite Empire he wrote the 23rd Psalm to remind himself and others of the way God, the Good Shepherd, guides us beside still waters and into green valleys and who caters a magnificent banquet in the presence of our enemies, and even leads us through the valley of the shadow of death, all so that each of us could say with King David, lo irah rah “I shall fear no evil.”
And the faith to be not afraid was also contained in a little bag of earth from Jerusalem that for two thousand years of exile from the land of Israel, we placed into every coffin. That bag was a little bag of hope that buried our fear and restored our hope that one day we would return to the land God had promised. We endured exile but because of the commandment not to be afraid we were not destroyed by exile.
In the 19th century this faith was taught every day by the Hasidic masters and the greatest of them all was Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav. And his favorite saying, the saying he believed contained the secret of life was this saying: kol haolam kulo, gesher tzar m'od, v'haikar lo lefached klal, “The whole earth is a very narrow bridge, a very narrow bridge, and the point - the only point of life is never to be afraid.” It was Reb Nachman's secret. It is the first secret, but it is the secret that makes all the other secrets possible.
Rejoice in life! Defeat the foe! Come home to your community! Face tomorrow with courage and hope! Stand for God! Stand with God! Be not afraid!
(Cantor sings kol haolam kulo)