There is a fine line between fear and awe.
This week in Parshat Tzav, we read:
"This is the ritual of the sin offering: [it] shall be slaughtered before Adonai, at the spot where the burnt offering is slaughtered: it is most holy...
Anything that touches its flesh shall become holy; and if any of its blood is spattered upon a garment, you shall wash the bespattered part in the sacred precinct. An earthen vessel in which it was boiled shall be broken; if it was boiled in a copper vessel, it shall be scoured and rinsed with water." (Lev. 6:18-21)
As I encountered these verses earlier in the week, I was confused; the text appears to be describing the sort of process we go through when "garments" or "vessels" become soiled or come into contact with a contaminant. Our Torah portion, however, is not talking about items that are DIRTY, but rather that come into contact with something HOLY. How does an item's proximity to holiness make it unclean? Surely, one would think it should be the opposite!
In the Mishnah Torah, Maimonides explores:
"How may one discover the way to love and fear (yirah) God?
When one will reflect concerning God's works, and God's great and wonderful creatures, and will behold through them God's wonderful, matchless and infinite wisdom, they will spontaneously be filled with love, praise and exaltation
and become possessed of a great longing to know the Great Name... and when they will think of all these matters, they will be taken aback in a moment and stricken with fear (pachad), and realize that they are an infinitesimal creature, humble and dark, standing with an insignificant and slight knowledge in the presence of the All Wise."
These two words, yirah and pachad, are often both translated as "fear," but they are not synonyms. Yirah is the kind of fear that a person might feel before making speech or presentation, witnessing the aftermath of a natural disaster, or seeing something unexpected and wonderful. Yirah is the kind of fear that is better understood as "awe." Pachad, on the other hand, is very different. This is the kind of fear that comes over a person when they see a giant spider crawling down their bedroom wall - pachad is terror.
Over the course of the past several weeks, I have experienced both of these types of fear: pachad and yirah, terror and awe. I have felt pachad as I thought of the mortality of my dear ones, family members and friends who work in the medical field or are in the categories most vulnerable to the COVID-19. I have felt pachad when I read story after story about inadequate PPE, respirators, and testing swabs. I have felt pachad when I think about the state of the world, both socially and economically, when we finally begin to emerge from the clutches of this global pandemic.
I have also felt yirah. I have felt Yirah when I look at the sheer numbers of people who have been infected across our globe by the Coronavirus. I have felt yirah as I have watched hundreds of millions of people in our country take to their homes, change their routines, and accept sacrifices previously unimaginable in order to band together to "flatten the curve" and preserve our collective life. I have felt yirah when I reflected on the sheer power of this novel virus to bring the human population of this planet to its knees. None of these moments of yirah - of awe - have been the warm and tingly, feel-good kinds of awe. They are scary - but they are the kind of scary that make me "possessed of a great longing to know the Great Name."
It is this kind of fear - the yirah, the awe - that we read about in Parshat Tzav in its description of that which comes into contact with the holiest of holy energy. Although we can encounter holiness in moments that are warm, inviting, comforting, or inspiring , our parsha reminds us that these are not the only experiences of the holy. There is also, in holiness, a great risk of danger and therefore a great need for respect, honor, and yes - social distancing - from that which has come into contact with the most holy, sacred, and set apart.
As we enter this Shabbat and the new week that follows, I invite us all to reflect on our fear as it comes up - in all of the ways in which it may come up - and explore which moments are in the category of pachad, and which are yirah. And, as we do this, we wash. We wash away that which is causing us dread or terror - and we also wash to give the honor and respect of distance and differentiation from that of which we stand in awe.