Robert Zaretsky at The American Scholar:
“The Days of Awe are coming.” Rather than a tagline for a Netflix series modeled on Game of Thrones, the phrase is the literal translation of Yamim Nora’im, or Jewish High Holidays. These awesome days begin with Rosh Hashanah on September 22 and reach a crescendo with Yom Kippur on October.
As a freshly minted man by the grace of a bar mitzvah, I cowered from the awe inspired by the fierce god who, Moses reminds the Israelites in Deuteronomy, spoke to them, unseen, through fire. “The gate between heaven and earth cracks open,” I was reminded, and “the Book of Life and the Book of Death are opened once again, and your name is written in one of them.”
Words chiseled on tablets in the mists of the distant past seem to carry greater weight than do words appearing on screens today. And yet, even though I am no longer an observant Jew, I am still filled with a kind of dread when the Days of Awe approach. They remind me, I imagine, of the fragility, ephemerality, and sheer contingency of our lives. Hardly surprising, then, that both “fear” and “awe” are encompassed by one word in Hebrew, yirah.
more here.
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