Torah Power
When a person is alive, even if it is a day old, it has the capacity to instill fear in the animal. When a person loses his or her appreciation for life, he or she becomes vulnerable to the attack from all directions. There is something mystical about life that threatens the most formidable foe.
Instilled Fear
As recounted in this week’s parsha, Jacob’s sons wiped out the inhabitants of the city of Shechem because their mayor’s son violated their sister Dinah. This action was fraught with danger. It could have easily provoked all the neighboring cities to attack Jacob and his children to avenge the deaths of the Shechemites.
Yet, the Torah testifies this did not happen. In the Torah’s own words: And the fear of G-d was on the cities, and they did not chase after the children of Jacob.”
The Hebrew word for fear in the Torah is usually “yirah.” Yet here the Torah uses a rather unusual word “Chitas.” Why is this term “Chitas” used and not “yiras,” the more commonly used term for fear.
The first time this word appears is earlier in the Torah in the context of G-d’s blessing to Noah in the aftermath of the flood. After blessing Noah to be fruitful and multiply, G-d then tells Noah: “And there shall be a fear and dread of you of all the beasts of the earth…” Here too, the word for “dread of you” is “chitchem, employing the same root as in Chitas.
Rashi explains the usage of that word in the context of the natural, instinctive fear that animals of the earth have for people. Rashi explains that the word contains the root of the word for life, which is chai. When a person is alive, even if it is a day old, it has the capacity to instill fear in the animal. When, however, the person has lost his life, no matter how big the person was, it no longer commands any respect from the beasts of the earth.
Loss of Appreciation for Life Recipe for Attack
From this we can infer that the usage of the word Chitas in the context of the fear that Jacob and his sons commanded is likewise associated with life. When a person loses his or her appreciation for life, he or she becomes vulnerable to the attack from all directions.
Whether it is the animal within oneself, or the people who intimidate us on the outside, a person who is imbued with life and enthusiasm for his or her beliefs will not have to worry. All those who threaten our physical and spiritual well-being will cower in our presence because we exude life. There is something mystical about life that threatens the most formidable foe.
Three Pivotal Torah Texts
The word “Chitas” - “fear or dread” - is also said to be an acronym for three pivotal Torah texts: Chumash (Five Books of Moses), Tehillim (Psalms) and Tanya (the classic mystical-Chassidic work, authored by R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of the Chabad Chassidic movement, whose day of liberation from Czarist imprisonment we celebrate this Sunday, the 19th day of Kislev).
These three works are representative of all Torah books, in imbuing us with true life. In truth, we possess true life just by virtue of the soul that enters our bodies at birth. However, our souls’ presence and life-giving energy is very often concealed. Instead the animal soul is what dominates and has no fear to lead us in the direction it wants to go.
By studying Torah, in general, and these three texts in particular, one’s G-dly soul asserts itself. In the presence of such a force, the animal within us retreats.
When a person, who would normally mock us because we are Jews, sees the life and enthusiasm that punctuate our Jewish life, these otherwise antagonistic individuals withdraw in fear and respect from us. How do we develop this spiritual vigor? One of the ways is by the daily study of Chitas.
The previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, encouraged that every day we should study one section of the weekly parsha , so that in the course of one week, we can complete the entire parsha. In addition, we should recite one section of Psalms daily, so that the entire book of Psalms is completed in the course of a month. Finally, one should also study a section of the Tanya so that in the course of the entire year one can complete the entire work. As a result, this course of Torah study will instill in us and evoke from us such spiritual dynamism that all impediments to our spiritual lives will disappear.
Study of Rambam
More recently, the Lubavitcher Rebbe added the study of the entire voluminous work of Maimonides, Mishneh Torah (also known as the Yad Hachazakah, “the Mighty Hand”), to our daily regimen of Torah study. By all Jews uniting in the study of a work that was written for all, young and old, as Maimonides writes in his own introduction, we give each and every individual the ability to access the collective soul of the Jewish nation. Whatever power we elicit by studying Torah, particularly Chitas, with the study of the Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, we reveal all of our collective life-forces, in the presence of which no barrier can stand.
Of all the barriers that have to be removed, the greatest and most stubborn is the barrier known as Galus, or exile.
To finally break through this obstacle, we need the power of Torah and particularly the life affirming study of Chumash, Tehillim, Tanya (Chitas) and Mishneh Torah as well. With these powerful life revealing instruments, we will break through the final barriers of exile and usher in the final redemption.
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From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Vayishlach by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.
