On Conquering Fear - NYTimes.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/03/opinion/david-brooks-on-conque...

Everybody is afraid sometimes, and, at those moments, it doesnt really help to

say, Suck it up and get over it! So it would be nice if there were subtler
strategies and techniques to conquer fear.
Fortunately, one such method is embedded in the story that Jews read
tonight as part of the Passover Seder. Its an attractive technique because it
involves kissing, talking and singing your way through fear.
There is, especially at the start, a lot of dread in the Exodus story. Moses is
afraid of the responsibility he is given. Hes afraid of being ridiculed and making
mistakes. Hes afraid that his people are not worthy or ready to be liberated. The
Israelites are afraid of the pharaoh and his soldiers. They are afraid of death but
also afraid of really living.
The fear makes people apathetic, torpid and skeptical. The Israelites are
unable to absorb words of hope. They shroud their lives in secrecy. As the
magnificent Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg puts it in her book The Particulars of
Rapture, It is this fear that makes hearing, reverie, and speech impossible: a
defensive rigidity that narrows the channels and closes the apertures.
To harden their lot, according to post-Temple commentaries, the pharaoh
forced the Israelite men to do endless labor and sleep in the fields, away from
their wives and marital beds. But the women made meals and brought wine to
their husbands in the evenings. After drinking and dining, the women would pull
out mirrors and the couples would gaze at themselves in the mirror. Im more
beautiful than you, the women would say. Im more beautiful than you, the
men would respond.
In this way, they would break out of their apathy and accustom themselves to

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On Conquering Fear - NYTimes.com

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/03/opinion/david-brooks-on-conque...

desire. They were covered with dirt and fear, but they challenged each other to
see beauty in the other. Gazing jointly into the mirrors, and aroused by each
other, they began to sense unexpected possibilities.
Before this desire was kindled, language had lost its power because the
people were rendered stone-deaf by fear. But, in this aroused, anticipatory state,
their ears open up. Their mouths become looser. From a state of being cramped
up in terror, there is a moment of relaxing.
The 18th-century thinker Rabbi Nachman of Breslov wrote that romantic
desire clears the throat. Once people start speaking to each other and telling
stories to each other, they generate alternate worlds. A story isnt an argument or
a collection of data. It contains multiple meanings that can be discussed,
questioned and reinterpreted.
Storytelling becomes central to conquering fear. Its a way of naming and
making sense of fear and imagining different routes out. Storytellers expand the
consciousness, waken the sleeping self and give their hearers the words and
motifs to use for themselves. Jews tell the story of the Exodus each generation to
understand the fears they feel at that moment. Stories create new ways of seeing,
which lead to new ways of feeling and thinking.
After the plagues, Pharaoh is compelled to accept the truth of the story that
Moses has been telling about his people. The Israelites are now strong enough to
make the leap from bondage.
The nature of that leap is illustrated by an incident that takes place at the
start. The normal version of this episode is that God parts the Red Sea, the
Israelites cross, the Egyptians are engulfed and then the Israelites sing in
celebration. But the alternate version is that the Israelites are singing at the
moment of crossing. They are not singing in celebration. They are singing in
defiance of terror.
The climactic break from bondage is thus done in a mood of enchantment.
The women, who have experienced the worst suffering, take out their timbrels
and become joyful and buoyant. According to some rabbis, Miriam, who leads the
singing, has a higher spiritual consciousness than even Moses because, with all
the bitterness behind her, she can leap into song. The song produces energy and
spiritual generosity. Borrowing from Oliver Sacks, Zornberg writes that the
people have become unmusicked by fear and pain. They have to become
remusicked.
Eventually, the Israelites are able to cope with fear. This makes them capable

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