A time for acquiring and deepening yiras Hashem of every kind
Are Elul and the subsequent Yamim Noraim period a time to feel the fear, or to banish the fear? The signals seem mixed.
On the one hand, the seforim cite the pasuk, “Aryeh sha’ag mi lo yirah — A lion has roared, who doesn’t fear?” as an allusion to this period. The word “aryeh” serves as an acronym for the month of Elul and the three days of judgement of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Hoshana Rabbah, when our sense of fear ought to be as instinctual as it is upon hearing the bellowing of the “king of the jungle” resounding across the African bush.
Yet, twice daily throughout this same period, we recite the kapitel Tehillim of L’Dovid Hashem Ori, whose opening verse asks: With Hashem as my light and salvation, mimi ira, mimi efchad, from whom shall I fear? The pesukim that follow further calm our fears, to the point that we state confidently that even if an entire enemy camp moves against me, standing alone, I still insist: “Lo yira libi — my heart shall not fear.”
So, which of these two rhetorical questions — both posed in pesukim and both applied to the very time of year at which we now stand — has it right? Is our attitude to be that of “Mi lo yirah?” Who would be so foolhardy as to not be afraid? Or, instead, ought it to be “Mimi ira?” Who is there to fear, anyway?
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