Kol ha’olam kulo gesher tsar m’od v’haikar lo l’fached klal: The whole world is a very narrow bridge, but the essence, (really… the main thing), is not to be afraid at all!
These words, adapted from the writings of the great Hassidic master Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav, are as enigmatic as they are famous. Set to music, the words are sung by children in schools and summer camps, at b’nei mitzvah celebrations, weddings, Shabbat tables, in every Jewish setting imaginable – by me, by you, probably many times over.
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov teaches that the essential thing in life is not to be afraid. Or not to be afraid, consumed and overpowered by fear. We are often plagued by fear. Our European forefathers and foremothers had a lot to be afraid of in a concrete physical way. Poverty, disease, political instability, pogroms. Thankfully, we don’t have the same kind of raw existential threats crouching at our door as they did.
We are living in a fearful time, globally. There is also fear locally, as we look into an uncertain future.
We live in an unpredictable and uncontrollable world. And while we’ve come leaps and bounds in tightening our grip and live with a certain degree of certainty, we certainly have a long way to go. The fundamental limitations and frailties of what it is to be human remain constant.
As the Yiddish proverb goes: A mensch tracht un Gott lacht, Man plans and God laughs.
If we are not in control, and if we don’t know what will happen from one moment to the next, how do we proceed? If the world is such a narrow bridge, how do we walk it, if we walk it at all?
The answer, or at least part of the answer, is in the song: lo l’fahed klal. We do not fear, or at least we do not allow our fear to immobilize us. In other words we “walk on.” As Rabbi Harold Kushner explains: “Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the overcoming of fear.” (Conquering Fear, p. 168) Even in the face of the unknown, we press forward with cautious optimism, alert but not frightened, vigilant but not paranoid.
I’d like to introduce you to Lillian Judd. She is an Auschwitz survivor and she has many stories of how she acted in spite of her fear.
Well, I was in Auschwitz, said Lillian. and I was working in a little factory. And we were forced to cut curtains lengthways into pieces. And we had a quota that we had to make every day. And I struggled to make my quota every day. And if you did not make your quota you were either killed or beaten senseless. Some of the ladies knew how to sew, but I had not a clue how to do any of it, but I was holding my own. Someone told us that Yom Kippur was coming. And we decided as a group, me and the other girls that were there [they were 17 and 18 years old] that we were not going to work on Yom Kippur. We decided that we would make our quota and extra every day and we would hide the extra under our quota, so that when the day of Yom Kippur came, we would make like we were working all day, but we actually would not be cutting any fabric.”
That is acting in spite of fear. It was not a happy story. They got caught. And she barely survived.
But that was not her point. She was illustrating how an everyday person can act in spite of their fear, in the most difficult situations.
It was none other than Rabbi Milton who took note that greater than the fear of death is the fear of life and of living for something. That far too many of us go through this world with a hesitancy born of a fear of the unknown, the “what ifs” and the inevitable uncertainties of our existence. Faced with this fear, Steinberg taught, we must choose to proceed with a sense of purposeful duty.
In Steinberg’s words, and with this I conclude: “Let the mother tend her young and let the poet sing his song, and the laborer dig his ditch and the merchant do his best. And if life is hard and the child grows into an ungrateful [adult] and the poet’s song falls on deaf ears, if the laborer digs his ditch in vain and the merchant fails in his business endeavors, then at least each will have done his or her duty.” (quoted in Kushner, Conquering Fear, p. 171)
Kol ha’olam kulo gesher tsar m’od v’haikar lo l’fached klal: The whole world is a very narrow bridge, but the essence, (really… the main thing), is not to be afraid at all!