By Yehuda Ringler

The behavior and dress of our children is important to us. When they act and dress in a fitting way we are calm and proud, and when they don’t we are concerned – and rightly so. These are things we can see, they’re important, and we watch them.

But the very fact that we can see them can mislead us. What can be seen can be measured, and what can be measured gets our attention. There is something else at work in our children, at least as important, that no one can grade – and precisely because it can’t be graded, it is the easiest thing in the world to neglect. If we ignore it, we do our children and ourselves a great disservice.

In Tanya, the Alter Rebbe presents three pillars of Avodas Hashem. Fearing G-d (the foundation of all negative commandments), loving G-d (the foundation of all positive commandments), and hiskashrus to the Rebbe, which is necessary for that love and fear to permeate a person and lead to action. (The astute reader will note that I omit kabalos ol. In two places in chapter 41, the Alter Rebbe writes that the source of kabalos ol is fear of G-d. ואין כאן המקום להאריך.) Hiskashrus, enabling everything else, is immediately and always relevant. But what of the other two? Can one be said to be a foundation, a prerequisite for the other?

It is obvious that the simplest explanation of fear of G-d – fear of punishment – is insufficient. As the Rebbe Rashab points out in Shuva Yisroel Ranat, fear of punishment would be a powerful motivator… if G-d would be quick to bring punishment. But He is not.

There is a National Geographic documentary which featured several people. One, Rabbi Matisyahu Devlin, became a chossid. The others left their respective Hasidic communities, and a Torah life. In one scene, one such person recalls a moment – I think it was when he struck a match on shabbos R”L. He was shaking, convinced that he would be struck down. And… nothing. Nothing happened. And things went downhill from there.

In Tanya, the Alter Rebbe gives us more meaningful paths in fear. He quotes the words of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai to his students, to fear G-d like they fear man. Because when someone sins, he’s worried that someone might see, but he forgets that G-d sees.

But why should someone care that He sees, if punishment is on a distant horizon? And even more, it could be that a person will be even more successful because of his sins, like the Alter Rebbe explains in Igeres Hateshuva.

He teaches that we should be mindful that it’s a terrible dishonour to G-d when we sin because we are so closely connected to him, and advises that we be masters of accounting (maarai dechusbana), remembering any ill we may have done.

But what if someone doesn’t care about the terrible effects of his actions above? After all, everyone knows their own problems and struggles, and the darkness of exile, and G-d can remove all of that darkness in a moment. So what does it matter if I bother Him? And how can we be so sure that a person will be bothered by the bad things he’s done? Maybe he has pleasant memories, and will resolve to do more.

Fear of G-d can only endure, can only have meaning, in the context of love. (It is perhaps worthwhile to note that the Alter Rebbe describes the hidden love for Hashem that every Jew has, and how fear is included within it, and not the other way around.) If a Jew has a degree of revealed love for Hashem, all of our earlier objections in regards to the weakness of fear fall away.

(It is worthwhile to note that in the maamer Shuva Yisroel Ranat, the Rebbe Rashab starts with the love of G-d כי הוא חייך,  because He is [the source of] your life, and continues from there to serving G-d in a way of bittul and gevurah. The concealment he mentions there is also referring to the concealment of the limited, grasped love, ואין כאן המקום להאריך.  See there.)

Really, this is something obvious, and there is no need to elaborate. When our relationship to an authority figure – maybe a strict teacher – is only based on fear of punishment, even the fear isn’t real. The only rule is don’t get caught. When there is a relationship of love, there is a fear of doing something that could interfere with that love. Of disappointment. I can recall from my own high school years a disappointed sigh from a Rebbe that I admired. It was an incomparably greater motivator for improved behaviour than an entire year of daily detentions. This is precisely the Alter Rebbe’s argument in Tanya – a Jew loves G-d (the hidden love), and from this is a fear of something which could disturb that connection, even to mesirus nefesh bepoel mamash.

I have a friend who had his journey in life, with ups and downs. He told me once that he always connected to davening, to that moment of connection to Hashem, and even when he was struggling in many ways, his time of davening was his oasis.

Love is something powerful and real, which can carry our children through their whole lives, wherever they may go. My friend was fortunate. But how can we inculcate that in our own children?

We can control our children’s behavior and dress, for a time at least, to a large extent. We can even put ideas and knowledge into their minds. But there is no curriculum, no technique, no tool for the one thing which could power and sustain everything else – to put love into their hearts. When there is something we can see and measure, and the measure turns up wanting, we act. But what happens to something that can’t be graded?

A chossid lived in Crown Heights, Reb Shmuel Finck OBM. He is a well known individual, but I only knew one facet of him. I davened in his daily 770 Shachris minyan when he was a chiyuv. Every single day he put on his tefillin with a joy and love which radiated and uplifted. He davened with excitement. Every day. No exceptions. I can still see him in my mind’s eye, even though it’s been more than a decade. Words can’t do it justice. I have seen a lot of people daven, many chiyuvim, and such a thing I have never seen before or since.

What our children do and how they dress is important. But the long term foundation for everything that we want in our children is love of G-d. And possibly the most important thing we can do to instill it in them is to instill it in ourselves.

The Rebbe quotes in Hayom Yom that the beginning of a spiritual downfall is a coldness in davening. The Alter Rebbe explains the possuk that the matter is very near, in your mouth and heart, to do it. If someone can’t see that, he can turn to “the great ones of his city, and they will explain it to him, and to them is my request.”

We shouldn’t think that to daven like a chossid should daven, to love G-d like a Jew should love G-d, is something relevant only to great Chassidim or previous generations. It is relevant here, now, and to all of us.