JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

ing the late 1930s and 1940s. His first volume of poetry, Angel
Arms, was published in 1929. This was followed by Poems
(1935), Dead Reckoning (1938), Collected Poems (1940), Afternoon
of a Pawnbroker (1943), Stranger at Coney Island (1948),
and New and Selected Poems (1956). The movies, newspapers,
comic strips, radio, and advertising were all targets for his
mordant attacks, as was the American faith in success and
wealth. Fearing’s effects are achieved by a mastery of objective
presentation, which anticipated the surrealist manner, pop
poetry, and concrete trends of a later generation of American
poets. Fearing’s first novel, The Hospital (1939) was followed
by The Dagger in the Mind (1941); Clark Gifford’s Body (1942);
The Big Clock (1946), the story of a manhunt; The Loneliest
Girl in the World (1951); The Generous Heart (1954); and The
Crozart Story (1960).
Bibliography: S.J. Kunitz (ed.), Twentieth Century Authors
(First Supplement) (1955), 319. Add. Bibliography: R. Barnard,
The Great Depression and the Culture of Abundance: Kenneth Fearing,
Nathanael West and Mass Culture in the 1930s (1995); A. Anderson,
Fear Ruled Them All: Kenneth Fearing’s Literature of Corporate
Conspiracy (2003).
[David Ignatow]
FEAR OF GOD (Heb. yirat elohim, but in the Talmud yirat
shamayim, lit. “fear of Heaven”), ethical religious concept,
sometimes confused with yirat ḥet, “the fear of sin,” but in
fact quite distinct from it. The daily private prayer of Rav (Ber.
16a), which has been incorporated in the Ashkenazi liturgy
in the Blessing for the New Moon, speaks of “a life of fear of
Heaven and of fear of sin.” In the latter, “fear” is to be understood
in the sense of apprehension of the consequences of sin
but in the former in the sense of “reverence”; as such it refers
to an ethical outlook and a religious attitude, which is distinct
from the actual performance of the commandments. “Fear of
God” frequently occurs in the Bible, particularly with regard
to Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac (Gen. 22:12), and
it is mentioned as that which God primarily desires of man
(Deut. 10:12). Nevertheless it does not seem to have an exact
connotation in the Bible (see *Love and Fear of God), and it
was the rabbis who formulated the doctrine of Fear of God
with some precision. Basing itself on Leviticus 19:14 (and similar
verses, e.g., 19:32, 25:17, 36:43), the Sifra (in loc. cf. Kid.
32b) maintains that the phrase “thou shalt fear thy God” is
used only for those commandments which “are known to the
heart” (“the sin is known to the heart of the person who commits
it, but other men cannot detect it” – Rashi in loc.) i.e.,
there are no social sanctions attached to it, and the impulse
behind its performance is reverence for God. This is, in fact,
reflected in Exodus 1:17 and it is emphasized, from a slightly
different aspect, in the famous maxim of Antigonus of *Sokho,
“Be as servants who serve their master without thought of
reward, but let the fear of heaven be upon thee” (Avot 1:3). It
was spelled out by Johanan b. Zakkai, when on his deathbed
he enjoined his disciples: “Let the fear of Heaven be upon you
as the fear of flesh and blood.” In answer to their surprised
query “and not more?” he answered, “If only it were as much!
fear of god
When a person wishes to commit a transgression he says, ‘I
hope no man will see me’” (Ber. 28b). The characteristic of
the God-fearing man is that he “speaketh truth in his heart”
(Ps. 15:2; BB 88a).
The fear of God complements knowledge of the Torah.
According to one opinion it is only through fear of heaven that
one can arrive at true knowledge of the Torah: “He who possesses
learning without the fear of heaven is like a treasurer
who is entrusted with the inner keys but not with the outer.
How is he to enter?” Another opinion is: “Woe to him who
has no courtyard yet makes a gate for it,” since it is through
knowledge that one attains fear of God (Shab. 31a–b). Since
fear of God is a state of mind and an ethical attitude, it can
best be acquired by considering and following the example
of one’s teacher by waiting on him, with the result that one
of the consequences of depriving a disciple of the privilege of
waiting upon his master is that he deprives him of the fear of
God (Ket. 96a). The quality and practice of fear of God depend
upon man alone. The statement upon which is based the
fundamental Jewish doctrine of the absolute free *will of man
is couched in the words “Everything is in the hands of heaven
except the fear of heaven.” The proof verse for this statement
is “what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the
Lord” (Deut. 10:12), and, countering this, the Talmud asks, “Is
then fear of heaven such a small thing?” answering that it was
only Moses who so regarded it (Ber. 33b).
For the relationship between fear of God and love of God
see *Love and Fear of God.
[Louis Isaac Rabinowitz]
The traditional attitude toward the fear (yir’ah) of God was
thus ambivalent: it was highly valued, but at the same time
was regarded as inferior to the love of God. (Cf. “Love and
Fear of God; see TB Sota 31a). Later Jewish thought attempted
to resolve this ambivalence by positing the fear of God as an
equivocal term. *Bahya ibn Paquda (11th century), in his Duties
of the Heart 10:6, characterized two different types of fear
as a lower “fear of punishment” and a higher “fear of [divine]
glory.” Abraham *Ibn Daud (early 12th century) differentiated
between “fear of harm” (analogous to the fear of a snake bite
or of a king’s punishment) and “fear of greatness,” analogous
to respect for an exalted person, such as a prophet, who would
not harm a person (The Exalted Faith VI). Maimonides (late
12th century) categorized the fear of God as a positive commandment.
Nevertheless, the halakhic status he accorded to
the fear of God did not prevent it from being presented in
diverse ways. In his Book of the Commandments (commandment
#4), Maimonides characterized it as “the fear of punishment,”
whereas in his Code he characterized it as the feeling of
human insignificance deriving from contemplation of God’s
“great and wonderful actions and creations” (Foundations of
the Torah 2:1). Nevertheless, later in the Code Maimonides
presents “service based on fear” as a religiously inferior type
of behavior of “the ignorant (ʿamei ha-arez), women and children,”
deriving from their hope for reward and fear of punishment
(Laws of Repentance 10:1). At the end of his Guide of the
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