Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a project of SIMHA, the Sephardic Initiative for Mental Health Awareness. This week, we talked about the elephant tied to the pole, and the shark in the tank, and we’ve discussed the animal within. There's a concept called the inner child but I’d to coin a new term called the inner animal, and I'll explain what that means.
Theres a pasuk at the end of Kohelet which says, ס֥וֹף דָּבָ֖ר הַכֹּ֣ל נִשְׁמָ֑ע אֶת־הָאֱלֹהִ֤ים יְרָא֙ וְאֶת־מִצְוֺתָ֣יו שְׁמ֔וֹר כִּי־זֶ֖ה כׇּל־הָאָדָֽם
At the end, let everything be known. Fear God, and keep His mitzvot, for this is the entire man. Rav Elchanan Wasserman points out that it doesn't say that Fear of God is an optional quality, a plus. Like you might say, that man is patient, that man is kind. Those are qualities in a man. So too, one might think we could say the man has Yirat Shamayim, but No.
If a person doesn't have fear of God, he's not a human being. That's what it means,
כִּי־זֶ֖ה כׇּל־הָאָדָֽם /This is what makes you into a man.
He says the Zohar explains that when God created man, he said, Na’aseh Adam/ Let us make man. There's only one God, so who is us? Rashi says, simply, He was speaking to the angels, in order to teach us a lesson in humility. But the Zohar has a different explanation. Man was created last, after the shark, the elephant, the lion, the tiger, the bears and everything else. So, God said to the entire animal kingdom, “Let us make man,” in other words, We're all going to partner up, and put a little bit of every animal into man.
So man has a little bit of cow in him, a little bit of lion in him, a little bit of snake in him and so on.. He has everything inside of him, the whole zoo is inside of him, and therefore he is called a miniature world.
This makes man the most vicious of animals. There is no fiercer animal than a human being. And if a lion has to be in a cage, what's the cage, what is the chain for a human being? More people were killed by people in World War II than by all the animals ever, from the beginning of time until the end of time. So what chains hold down this animal called man, to stop him from damaging? A man could be a philosopher like Aristotle, but all of his wisdom will not hold him back. The only thing that holds man back is Yirat Shamayim/fear of God. Having Fear of God doesn't necessarily mean you're walking around petrified, but it means there’s a sense of responsibility to a Creator, or higher power, if you want to call it that. You have to believe in a God. You have to believe in a force that is controlling you, that's rewarding and punishing you.
That’s what Abraham told Avimelech in Bereshit (20,11), after he told them Sara was his sister.
רַ֚ק אֵין־יִרְאַ֣ת אֱלֹהִ֔ים בַּמָּק֖וֹם הַזֶּ֑ה
וַהֲרָג֖וּנִי עַל־דְּבַ֥ר אִשְׁתִּֽי׃
There's no fear of God in this place. They'll kill me for my wife.
Why? They had everything; they had all the qualities that you’d need. What didn't they have? They didn't have Yirat Hashem. And everything that you have will not help without Yirat Shamyim. This is important because part of our quest for emotional wellness is taking care of a lot of those animalistic instincts inside of us, that interfere with our emotional wellness. But you can't just get rid of them with psychology or philosophy. You need a component of God.
The famous 12-step program is based on bringing God into your life. Step 2 is to ‘Come to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity; make a decision to turn our will in our lives over to the care of God,’ and so on and so forth.
They use the phrase Higher force just to be politically correct, but the point is that you need Yirat Shamayim to have the self-control needed to fix yourself.
The beautiful words of Rav Elchanan Wasserman are a revelation: There is not just an inner child. We can talk to the inner child,we can soothe, calm, and educate the inner child. But there's also an inner animal. The inner animal is fierce, and he doesn't necessarily listen to soft, nice words. The only thing that keeps him in check is what we call Yirat Shamayim, which is not popular in our times. People talk about love of God; yet no one wants to talk about fear of God. But that's why we call these days the Yamim Noraim/ the awesome days.
You need that fear and responsibility, there are consequences. You need that mindset in order to change. Without it, all the emotional wellness in the world won't get you there. You need to have this added factor.
We have to be thankful that we, as Jews, have Yirat Shamayim. We have these Yamim Noraim, which makes it easier for us to change.
Have a wonderful day.