Q09
What is a fear that you have & how has it limited you? How do you plan on overcoming it this year?
In Jewish thought, people have a two-pronged relationship with their Creator: We love God and we fear God. (It’s a lot like the relationship many of us have with our parents.)
In the Talmud, there’s a story in which Yohanan ben Zakkai blesses his students to “fear God as much as you fear your flesh and blood.” His students, puzzled, ask, “No more than that?” But people fear each other more than they fear God, argued their teacher–because, when someone is about to sin, his or her first thought is, I hope nobody sees me do it.
The point of Yohanan’s story isn’t that we all need to believe in God. It’s that anything can be used in a positive way, even fear. Regardless of whom or what we fear, that moment of being afraid–and the subsequent moment of confronting that fear–is a feeling that we can take, and act upon, and harness our fear into positive change.
Q10. When you get your answers to your 10Q questions next year, what do you hope will be different about you? >> |
10Q
is a national project that asks people to answer a question a day online for 10 days during the
High Holidays
. It offers a new way for Jews and people of all backgrounds to slow down and reflect. Answers are emailed to a secure online vault just after
Yom Kippur
; next year, just before
Rosh Hashanah
starts, answers are sent back to participants and the whole process begins again.
Register here.
