Welcome to Emotional Wellness, a project of SIMHA, The Sephardic Initiative for Mental Health Awareness. Yesterday, Dr. Katzenstein spoke about how emotions motivate, and he used two religious examples. He spoke about how we sin even though we know it's wrong, and how we need our emotions in order to keep us in line. He said we make decisions based on emotions and feelings, not necessarily logic. He said emotions motivate behavior.
Rav Wolbe actually quotes this concept from the Tikkunei Zohar, where it says that “Love of God and fear of God are the two wings through which a person flies and lifts himself up.” The rabbis further connect it and say the Torah is broken into two areas, positive commandments and negative commandments.
When you're lying in bed and you want to sleep, but you have to get out of bed, what gets you out of bed? Love. Love motivates you to do. Ahavat Hashem gets you to do things. You put on your tefillin, you put up your mezuzah, you eat your matzah, you do what you need to do. Love of Hashem gets us to do the positive commandments.
But what happens if I want to eat something that's not kosher? What's motivates me to stop? Yirat Shamayim/Fear of God stops me from doing the negative commandments. These two motivational tools are like two wings of a bird. A bird that has one wing without the other won't be successful. He needs both.
So too, with our two motivational wings. We have our love and our fear, and they have to be balanced.
Love is symbolized by the right wing, fear is symbolized by the left wing, and the Torah is the body in the middle, the body of the bird.
Those are really our three Avot- Avraham, Yitzhak and Yaakov. And that means in order to be a successful Jew, you need to have Ahava/love, you need to have Yirah/fear, and of course, you need the Torah itself, which is what we're trying to keep to.
So, this concept, that our emotions motivate us to do things, is the reason our entire Torah is based on love and fear.
Many people, before they do a mitzvah say “Leshem Yechud Kudsha Barich Hu/ I’m doing this Mitzvah to create the Oneness of God.”
And we say, “B’Dechilu u’ Rechimu,” which means, “With fear and with love.” Before any Mitzvah, the Kabbalists would make the proclamation that, “this Mitzvah is being done with love and fear.” Those are our two motivational tools. We cannot, as we said, just be logical, artificial intelligence people. In order to be successful in life, we must arouse our emotions. Someone might short circuit and love or fear the wrong things, so we have to be focused and arouse our love for God to do for Him, and arouse our fear of consequences, to prevent ourselves from doing things that we shouldn't be doing.
But of course, above all, we need the Torah, because if you don't have the right information and the right facts, you are all off; you'll motivate yourself for the wrong things. So, we need to have the knowledge; we have to have the intellect, but the knowledge alone won't help.
All the knowledge in the world does nothing on its own. If I tell a smoker the dry fact that cigarette smoking is dangerous for his health, or that speeding is dangerous for your health, it won't be successful. And that's why (and they've studied this), after seeing advertisements of a picture of a blood-splattered sidewalk, people think twice before speeding, because that arouses their emotions. If you see a black lung ad, that arouses your emotions.
And that's why when people are collecting money, they want to show you their album. They want to show you their their story, because intellect alone won't help. Many people are emotional givers. They hear about a drive, and someone tells one emotional story that pulls on their heartstrings, and they give money. What's happening? That's emotions.
So, we need to have emotions, but, of course, we need to have the facts. The emotions are there to motivate us to do,or not do, what's right or wrong. And that's the perfect package: Love, fear, and Torah knowledge.
And again, this is an emotional lens on religion. Have a wonderful day.