God-Fearers

God-Fearers May 27, 2016

We are apt to think of a deeply religious person as a ‘true believer,’ writes Howard Wettstein in The Significance of Religious Experience. In the Hebrew Bible, though, “there is no expression . . . that corresponds to our term, ‘believer.’ The phrase that comes closest is ‘Y’rei Adonai,’ which means ‘one who stands in awe of the Lord.’. . . This suggests an emphasis on affect, orientation, responsiveness, rather than the cognitive. Specifically, this Hebrew expression suggests that awe plays a central role. ‘Awe rather than faith is the cardinal attitude of the religious Jew,’ writes A. J. Heschel” (204).

The experience of awe is a paradoxical combination of humility and exaltation, which is connected to the experience of the sacred. Wettstein writes, “Awe seems to engender a sense of the holy” (205). In Judaism, the holy person, the “true believer,” is the one who stands in the awe of God. Awe is not a fleeting experience but a steady orientation in life: “What is distinctive about such a religiously developed person is not only the object of awe. Perhaps even more important is the habitual quality, the steadiness, of awe” (206). The God-fearer is in awe not only in the presence of the sublime, but in ordinary experience, in the presence of another person, or in everyday encounters with the natural world.

So the question becomes, how can awe be sustained? How can one remain in an attitude of awe over time? Study of the tradition is one “tool” (206). So is ritual: “Ritual plays a major role in effecting and sustaining the transformation. Consider the practice of saying blessings: on eating and drinking, on smelling fragrant spices, herbs, plants, on seeing lightning, shooting stars, vast deserts, high mountains, a sunrise, the ocean, on seeing trees blossoming for the first time of the year, on seeing natural objects (including creatures) of striking beauty, on meeting a religious scholar, on meeting a secular scholar, on seeing a head of state, on hearing good news, on hearing bad news. . . . the practice of saying blessings is training in awe. One develops the habit, before so much as sipping water, to reflect and appreciate. In addition to the blessings’ training function, blessings also function as reminders. Ordinary experience is distracting, and the tradition has assembled reminders to assist in maintaining focus” (206-7).

Fixed prayers at fixed times also contribute to the development of awe: “Encounter with literature of such power, first thing in the morning for example, encourages the regularization of attitudes to which the literature so ably gives voice. Indeed, ritualization turns out to be a great virtue: the agent need not wait until the appropriate experiences present themselves” (207).

Wettstein is aware that for many “ritual will seem like rote performance, constricting rather than expansive, mechanical rather than expressive.” But this response fails to show proper “respect for repetition. One who regularly engages with prayer, for example, not only can come to take comfort in the familiar, but can also come to see, in the repeated sentences, new depths. Since we are speaking of great literature, it will inevitably be that difference sentences, or different turns of phrase, leap off the page, as do different emphases, different meanings and levels of meaning. And what is true of prayer is also true for the non-linguistic rituals” (208).


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