Chasidut for Taanit 3:14

Indeed, the essense of serving G-d depends upon the level of one’s knowledge.¹⁶Knowledge precedes all other accomplishments. According to R. Gershon Henokh, service, love, and fear only exist when one “knows.” Prayer is called “the service of the heart,” as the Gemara (Ta’anit 2a) asks on the verse (Devarim, 11:13), “If you heed My mitzvot … to serve Him with all your heart.” “What is considered the service of the heart? This is prayer.” For in order to serve God, one needs two qualities – the love of God and the fear of God,¹⁷“יראת השם” (yirat Hashem), translates as the “fear of God.” It can similarly be understood as awe, reverence, or awareness of God’s presence, which to varying degrees, affects one’s behavior and concern for the proper adherence to God’s laws. as it states in the Zohar (Shlach, 165a), “One who serves God with joy fulfills the verse (Tehillim, 100:2), ‘Serve God with joy,’ and one who serves God with fear fulfills the verse (ibid, 2:11), ‘Serve God with fear.’” Clearly it is impossible for a person to serve, fear, and love something that he does not know.¹⁸The author argues that one needs knowledge in order to begin to serve God. It is clear from the above mentioned teaching in the Talmud that prayer is one of the main forms of the service of God – “service of the heart.” Prayer obviously requires belief. A person cannot pray full-heartedly unless he believes that God is listening to him. But the author is saying more. Even an animal will obey its master only if it has some fear of punishment for disobedience, or show dedication in its actions if it feels love for his master. How much more so, a human being. The deeper man’s fear and love is for God, so does he strengthen his dedication to fulfilling God’s will. Do develop these feelings, he needs to put his mind and heart on the nature of God and the intimite role God plays in his life at all moments. All the good man receives, whether it is health, children, knowledge, honor, wealth, or wellbeing, is bestowed upon him by God. And all suffering – no matter how small – can be considered some form of Divine chastisement. The more man strives to know God in all of his walks of life, the more God will respond in kind and reveal Himself on a deeper level. We find in the introduction to the Tikunei Zohar (5b): The tenth level¹⁹The Zohar describes two levels of fear of God: a lower and a higher, depending upon their correspondances in the sefirotic tree. That is, classic Kabbalah views reality in terms of a gradual ten-step descent from the infinite Godhead to the physical world. Each step, or sefirah, dims and colors the Divine Light, until it can be perceived in our world. These ten stages are further divided into four worlds, known as Atzilut (Emanation), Beriyah (Creation), Yetzirah (Formation) and Asiyah (Action). Furthermore, these correspond to the Tetragrammaton – the four letter Name of God – .י – ה – ו – ה The “tenth level” discussed here is the sefirah of Malkhut (Sovereignity). Being the lowest and furthest step from the Godhead, it is also the sefirah of greatest concealment and constriction. On this level – as it corresponds to the human psyche – fear is the product of a lack of true knowledge, and means simply “fear of punishment” for transgressing Divine law. Such an attitude reflects a distance from God, and a relationship to Torah’s laws as external, imposing commandments. in the fear of God is as follows. There is fear, and there is fear. Not all expressions of fear are the same. One person’s fear of God may be largely motivated by the fear of Divine punishment. Of this it is taught (Pirkei Avot 2:5), “An unlearned person cannot fear sin.”²⁰In other words, a person ignorant of the Torah does not have the basic information to know what to fear. A higher level of fears derives from the Torah itself, which is Tiferet,²¹Tiferet (Beauty) is the sefirah of harmony and balance. In the center of the Sefirotic tree, it connects all points on the map: above and below, right and left. Kabbalistically, Tiferet corresponds to the Torah, which also connects and harmonizes all levels – man and God, man and his fellow, man and himself. Knowledge of Torah brings one into connection with the sefirah of Tiferet, which results in a higher type of fear: not the fear of punishment, but an awe and recognition of God’s glory, which automatically causes a person to cling to and fulfill the commandments. called the “middle column,”²²The ten Sefirot are organized in three columns, right, left, and middle. The middle column joins the right and the left together. It is closely related to Tiferet (see previous note.) which is the name Havay’ah (the Tetragramaton,י-ה-ו-ה). Because of this, the authors of the Mishnah taught, “Great is the Torah in that it brings a person to action.”²³The Torah is the middle column, whose action essentially joins all of the ten Sefirot together and enables communication between them, and hence, generates action. In the same way, true fear of God is the first impetus for all Divine service. If a person does not know the Torah, or the reward for keeping its commandments and the punishment for transgressing its commandments, nor is he aware of the One who created the Torah and gives it to Israel, how can he fear God and guard His commandments? For this reason David said to his son Shlomo, “Know the God of your fathers and serve him.” For if one does not know the one who gave him the Torah and commanded him to guard it, how then can he fear Him and fulfill its commandments?