Fear, There, Everywhere

Here we go again

This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

In a time of great upheaval and unrest, President Franklin Roosevelt implored us that fear was the only thing worth fearing. Amid all the hubbub and tumult, fear of fear was at the top of the priority list.

That speech was given 92 years ago. Eight years ago, almost exactly to the date, I gave a sermon right before a consequential election. It was my first year in the pulpit and what a “joy” it was to have my first professional year falling during the Trump-Clinton election. Here I am now, eight years later and somehow we find ourselves in an oddly similar emotional place. One Trump presidency, Biden presidency, insurrection, and pandemic later, the fear is tangible.

To be quite honest, I am not sure what we do with it. Fear can be useful. It can push us to do things that can save, and of course, it can be deeply problematic leading us to actions that are awful. Fear is wielded quite often in election cycles:

Fear-mongering during presidential elections is par for the course

psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert, author of Be Fearless: Change Your Life in 28 Days, points out:

Scaring people into believing their opponent is bad, racist, trigger happy, will deport people, etc. are all part of a normal campaign…By instilling fear into people's minds, it creates doubt and uncertainty.

It’s not just a modern conceit. Researchers identify Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 “Daisy” ad as the first fear-based political ad, and says that fear’s presence in American discourse has only increased since then. They agree that politicians, companies and the media have played a big part in the change, figuring out how to trigger fear and using that knowledge more frequently. 

So yes, I can’t help but feel that FDR was on to something. Fear is a powerful entity that seems to be quite pervasive nowadays. So the question is, knowing that fear is inevitable and can be channeled for the good in certain situations, how can we harness it and what should we be careful of when it comes to fear? 

Fear plays an incredibly large part in the emotional back drop of the portion this week, dealing with the flood of and the protagonist of the story, Noah. One cannot imagine the sheer fear he must have been feeling. To have been reared in a world of lawlessness and licentiousness and to know that you were the one singled out to lead the new world was daunting. To survive an apocalyptic event in a wooden ark with your family and your closest animal friends while the world crumbles around you must have been wildly fear inducing. 

And then, not quite as quickly as it starts, it’s over and the world is Noah’s to do with as he pleases. But you see, that fear didn’t just stop in the flood. It carried over; Noah was consumed by it. Immediately following the flood, things seem to be trending upward: altars are built, covenants are made, rainbows are sprung, but that’s really just the calm before the next storm. 

We are told from the Torah¹:

וַיָּ֥חֶל נֹ֖חַ אִ֣ישׁ הָֽאֲדָמָ֑ה וַיִּטַּ֖ע כָּֽרֶם׃

Noah, the tiller of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard.

This planting a vineyard, innocuous at first glance, leads to him having a bit too much to drink, which leads to him passing out, which leads to...well, it’s a bit unclear what happens next. Some sort of lewd encounter takes place with his son Cham. Curses abound and we don’t really hear much from Noah after this narrative.

Looking back at the start of this narrative, I believe that we can understand how Noah’s fear made him act in such a way that caused great damage to himself and the world around him. There is much disagreement from the Rabbis about whether the above verse actually means “Noah, man of the Earth began planting a vineyard.”

The word ‘vayahel’ is multivalent and not only is it related to the Hebrew word ‘to start’ but it is also related to the word halal-profane. On this note, many commentators posit that Noah lost control. He debased himself by planting this vineyard because let his fear overtake his normal ability make the right decisions. In a sense, like we learned before, it was as if the fear from the flood rewired his normal brain functions. Before the flood, Noah cared greatly, it seemed, about the world around him, striving to create a space where his community could survive, but he’s lost that ability now.

He should have acted differently here. As fear does in a great many situations, it made Noah forget that there was still a world around him, albeit a much smaller one. Fear tends to push us inward, causing us to think primarily about ourselves and those that are like us.

In causing this reaction, fear also pushes us to want to look backward on what is familiar rather than face the unknown of what is to come. But there is a problem on looking backward. In addition to drawing on problematic archetypes, figures, language choices, and concepts which are best left in the past, going backward pushes us away from progress and gets us stuck.

This is what the B’nei Yissaschar, Reb Tzvi Elimelech Spira of Dinov argues Noah was guilty of in this moment:

It (the word begin) seems to be connected to that which we learned in the Zohar. Namely, that Noah wanted to understand the secret of Adam. He didn’t want, God forbid, to dabble in such planting but rather he wanted to understand the essence of Adam’s sin. But he didn’t realize that he was planted in it himself.

Adam, of Garden of Eden fame, had an issue with a certain fruit, a product of the earth. Reb Tzvi Elimelech argues the point that Noah wanted to understand more about that. He was afraid and so he wanted to use the past as a frame of reference. But the danger of looking through that scope overcome by fear led to a problematic ending.

Those hemmed in by their fear face that prospect. Namely, the danger of looking backward according to the Bnei Yissaschar is that even with the best intentions, certain ideas and beliefs can get embedded within us that are more harmful than useful. Noah was curious and that drove him to look backward. But once he went backward, he never returned. He got stuck.

Instead of studying history, learning from its mistakes, and adapting them to meet the current and future needs, some leaders look to the past and stay in the past. It gets embedded within them. In part they do this because their fear of what is to come scares them more than fear of an unknown, failed past.

What is to come is admittedly scary. We can’t quite picture it. There are variables we don’t even know about that could rear their heads and cause us pain. But that also means there are things to come that will be joyous, hopeful, and innovative beyond our belief. How we wield our fear shapes the lens through which we see our fear.

So here we are eight years later, facing another consequential election that is rife with fear. Here we are again reading the story of Noah, a complicated hero who had a limited righteousness, one that allowed him to save humanity but also wasn’t enough to prevent his fear from focusing almost solely on himself in the aftermath. We feel it too. The fear is palpable.

But I am not sure the greatest fear is simply fear. I think the greatest fear is a specific fear that wants us to move backward. Since we can’t run away from it, I hope we can find those who know how to use their fear to learn from the past in order to, as FDR noted, advance and jump courageously into the future.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Weekend. Also, vote!

1. Genesis 9:20