Worship & Holidays

Worship & Holidays Introduction

Shabbat

Jewish Holidays/Calendar

High Holy Days

High Holy Day Music/Sermons

Rabbi's Corner

Sacred Music

Misheberach List

D'var Torah

From our Congregants

Traveler's Prayer

Jewish Links
From Our Congregants

D'var Torah by Martin Granowitz - July 17, 2010

Today's Torah portion deals with one of the greatest enemies of human kind: fear, and its antidote: faith. In chapter one, verses 29 - 32, Moses says to the Jewish people, regarding the pagan inhabitants of the Promised Land, 'Have no dread or fear of them. None other than the Lord your God who goes before you, will fight for you, just as He did for you in Egypt before your very eyes, and in the wilderness, where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you traveled until you came to this place. Yet for all that, you have no faith in the Lord your God."

Moses had been trying to get Israel to have faith in God's promises by reminding them of how good He had been to them in the past: by redeeming them from slavery, by allowing them to pass safely through the sea, by revealing Himself to them at Sinai, by protecting them in the wilderness, and finally by bringing them to the edge of the land of Israel.

When we consider how faithful God has been to protect and preserve us in the past, we should be ashamed of how we fail to trust Adonai in the present. We need to heed the words of the Psalmist (55:23) "Cast your burden upon the Lord, and He will sustain you" and the words of the prophet Habakkuk (2:4) "The righteous man is rewarded with life for his faithfulness" also translated as "The righteous shall live by their faith."

The opposite of faith is fear. The people had heard the report of the spies that "giants were in the land." They reasoned that God could not be good, since out of their fear they had concluded that "Adonai hates us." It is always the natural human response to think that God is less than good whenever fear overcomes us when confronting life's difficulties. Our growth in faith begins, however, when we refuse to let go of GodŐs goodness, despite life's difficulties.

This refusal to give in to fear is why Caleb and Joshua were the only two of the twelve spies who were permitted to permanently enter the Promised Land. They had enough faith to bring back a positive report about the land. Caleb had calmed the fears of the people, thus showing them the potential for reaching out to God's goodness. He saw neither the ugliness of the past nor the fear of the present. Instead, his was a vision of Israel's glorious future.

How can we develop faith? We can do so by allowing the Divine Presence within our soul to assert itself. To overcome fear, we need to foster the attitude that when we face life's troubles and challenges, we have available a source of help greater than ourselves and that this Divine Source will never abandon us or make us shoulder a burden by ourselves. By seeing past our fear, we are able to embrace faith.

Rabbi Morris Liechtenstein, the founder of the Society of Jewish Science, taught that when we pray, we should visualize ourselves as already having the attributes we aspire to have. I would like to share two affirmative prayers he taught followed by an affirmation from Hebrew Scriptures that have given me great comfort over the years.

I am calm and cheerful. I hate no one. I envy on one. There is no worry or fear in me. I trust in God, all the time.

The God-consciousness in me expresses itself in health and calmness, in peace, in power and in happiness.

Heal us, Adonai, and we shall be healed. Help us and we shall be helped. For You are our help. Amen