Temple Beth Sholom New City NY

A man lying in a tub almost entirely submerged under a huge pile of live, wriggling earthworms; a woman surrounded by rats; snakes; dark corners; whatever makes people afraid - that's what is shown on the reality show, "Fear Factor." Of all the reality shows, this one is probably the most "real." We all have fears, and we often do really stupid things to overcome them:

One comedian told his audience he was recovering from a head-on crash. It wasn't his fault, he said. The highway sign said, "Do not cross center line if yellow." He had to show them he wasn't. [King Duncan, King's Computer Treasury of Dynamic Humor, Seven Worlds Pub. (Knoxville, Tenn., 1990),"Courage".]

Many of our responses to fear are not at all funny. Far too often we lash out at and even destroy those closest to us, especially our children, who often bear the brunt of our anxieties. According to our legends, Abraham's father, Terach, was a manufacturer of idols. Because he understood that there was only one God, Abraham destroyed all the false gods in his father's warehouse.

Terach was afraid for his life. What if the authorities found out? He'd be killed. In his fear, Terach handed his son over to the king, Nimrod. Nimrod threw Abraham into a fiery furnace. Even though God kept him from being harmed, say the legends, he never spoke to his father again. He left his home and never returned. [Cited by Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sass, The American Rabbi, High Holydays, 2001, p. 9.]

Our biggest fear? Death. Woody Allen once boasted that he was not afraid of dying. He just didn't want to be there when it happened. [King Duncan, King's Computer Treasury of Dynamic Humor, Seven Worlds Pub. (Knoxville, Tenn., 1990),"Death".] Which means, of course, that he is as afraid of dying as the rest of us. Our biggest fear is the fear of our own death, with the fear of the death of others we love a close second:

A young woman went away to college, leaving her plants and her goldfish in the care of her mother, who had a tendency to be forgetful. She forgot to water them and the plants died by the end of the month. The mother dutifully broke the bad news to her daughter. When the young woman called a week later, her mother confessed that (undoubtedly because she forgot to feed them) the goldfish had died, too. There was a long pause, then in a fearful voice the girl asked, "How's Dad?" [King Duncan, King's Computer Treasury of Dynamic Humor, Seven Worlds Pub. (Knoxville, Tenn., 1990),"Loser."].

We'd love to be able to conquer the threat of death, but we know that we can't. Consider this parable, told by one of my colleagues:

	A lamb found a hole in a fence and crept through. It lost its way and then realized it was being followed by a wolf. It ran and ran, but the wolf kept chasing it until the shepherd came and rescued it and carried it lovingly back to the fold.
	When they arrived, everyone urged the shepherd to nail up the hole in the fence. He agreed and went to get his tools, but he looked in vain. Nowhere could he find a hammer or nails or boards to do the work. And thus the fence was not mended and the lamb lived in a permanent state of danger... [Rabbi Sanford Ragins, The American Rabbi, Fall, 1999, pg. 53.]

There is no way to close up the dark hole through which we all slip, pursued by, as our legends put it, the Malach ha-Mavet, the Angel of Death. None of us will escape the final decree, but if we live in fear or do stupid, destructive things to try and quell our fear, life and it's meaning are destroyed.

Isn't that exactly what the terrorists are doing? Are they brave because of their passion for killing others and their willingness to die in the process? This is not bravery, it is cowardice. They are deathly afraid … of dying. They try and conquer death, control death, by doing what death does: by killing - other people and then themselves. To overcome death by killing and dying - could anything be sicker, be more of a perversion of what it means to be human? Saddest of all, they will force us to kill them because of their insanity.

The best we can do, as our tradition also understands, is not overcome death, but overcome our fears:

	The Midrash says that God instructed [each of the 600,000] Israelite[s when they were wandering in the wilderness after leaving Egypt] to dig a grave on the ninth of Av [the day on which the Temple would be destroyed], lay down in it and remain until morning. Each year… this was done. Each year, all but 15,000 people would emerge alive the next day, until all 600,000 died.
	This went on year after year until the fortieth year when, on Tisha B'Av that year, the people entered their graves and all emerged alive the next morning. The people at first thought they had miscalculated the day and decided to lay in their graves for another night. All awoke, alive. Still uncertain, they lay down for another night, and another, and another until the fifteenth day of Av when they realized, seeing the full moon, that the ninth day of Av must certainly have passed and God's decree must have been lifted. The people rejoiced, knowing that they could now enter the land.
	What this strange, even morbid, Midrash teaches is that only… by digging their own graves and facing their fear of death would they be permitted to enter the Land. [Torah-Fax, Bemidbar, 5757.]

Without conquering our fear of death, our life becomes a series of aimless wanderings or comes to a halt altogether, or turns us into murderers.

We cannot conquer that which we won't confront. The High Holydays are known as the Yamim No'ra'im, often translated as the Days of Awe, but literally, the Days of Fear, because that is what we are here to do: confront and hopefully conquer our fear of death. The traditional white robes are not white to signify purity. They are white because that's the color of the shrouds in which we will be wrapped in the grave. On Yom Kippur we don't eat, in order to feel how frail our mortal bodies are, and what it's like to die a little. We recite Yizkor, recall our loved ones who have died and, not incidentally, we are reminded that someday our own death will ensue.
How do we overcome our fear of death? I think we can learn a lot from the lion tamers, those brave circus performers who seem to have conquered their fear and go into a cage full of dangerous beasts who could kill them in an instant.

One of the most famous of the lion tamers, Gunther Gebel-Williams, died recently of cancer on Thursday, July 19. I had the privilege of seeing him one of the 1,191 times he performed at Madison Square Garden as the star of the Ringling Brothers - Barnum & Bailey Circus. Seeing him in that cage with huge lions and tigers and bears ("Oh My!" is right!), I would never have guessed, as his obituary related, he was only 5 feet 4 inches tall.

How did such a small man intimidate those giant creatures? He didn't. The most famous lion tamer before Gebel-Williams was Clyde Beatty, who usually walked into the cage with a chair and a whip, and often, a revolver. He intimidated the beasts, or at least tried to. Gunther would have none of that. He entered the ring "armed" only with small pieces of meat to reward the animals when he was pleased with what they did. In his autobiography, Untamed, he wrote about his approach:

I have never been stricken with the man-against-beast syndrome… Respect is the foundation of my training style. I worked with tigers as a trainer, never a tamer… I never tried to break their spirits and so I did not use brutality. To train my animals I used words, always words…[Quoted in NY Times Obituary, July 20, 2001, Section B, pg. 7.]

Isn't that what we use, also? The words of our prayers and the words of our music, together with the words of our hearts and minds help us to face the dark and endless night that someday comes to us all. Sometimes the words are only a halfhearted attempt, like those of the lion tamer who placed an ad in the newspaper that read: "Lion tamer - wants tamer lion."

The words that are most effective in helping us overcome our fear of death are those that connect us to others:

A first grader strutted up in front of his classmates and proclaimed, "When I grow up, I'm going to be a lion tamer. I'll have lots of fierce lions, and I'll walk in the cage and they'll roar." He paused a moment, looking at his classmates' faces, and then added, "Of course, I'll have my mother with me." [King Duncan, King's Computer Treasury of Dynamic Humor, Seven Worlds Pub. (Knoxville, Tenn., 1990),"Courage".]

It is our mothers and our fathers, and sisters and brothers and friends, and all the other loved ones who are no longer with us, that we counted upon during their lifetime to help us face the terrifying tigers of a harsh reality. They were with us, and near us, and waiting for us when we got home, and there on the other end of the phone to share the moments of our lives with...

Without them, are we left only with our memory, our grief, and the fear that our loved ones once helped us tame? No, not if we understand that what they did for us we are to do for others:

	A woman was flying on a plane across the country. She was feeling afraid and sorry for herself and very annoyed by the sniffling of a little boy sitting beside her. She scolded the man on the other side of the child for not taking care of him.
	"This child isn't with me," he said, "I thought he was yours."
	The little boy wiped his tears and said, "I'm with nobody. When my Aunt Maggie gets tired of me in New York, she sends me back to California, and when my aunt in California doesn't want me either she sends me back to New York. I was kind of... scared... and wished someone would pay attention to me."
	So what did the woman do? She forgot her fears and her loneliness and her annoyance, all her sour feelings. She put her arms around the little boy, who snuggled against her and fell asleep with a smile on his face. [King Duncan, Dynamic Preaching, Jan/ Feb/ Mar, 1994. "Watch What You Eat".]

What else is there - crashing our cars to show we're not afraid of death, being brutal to those around us, hiding from life's risks, or doing what death does: killing others and ourselves?

None of these will help. But help others face their fears, quell their fears, and you will take care of your own. Let that be what we remember most about the loved ones we now recall, and let that be what we take with us back into the world when this Day of Atonement draws to a close.