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Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz: “We are afraid that we may be severed from that Source.”


“Love and fear are not necessarily incompatible, for any love contains, within itself, fear.

Whenever there is an object of love, there is also the fear of losing it.

This is not fear of punishment but fear of being disconnected from God.

‘Fear that is contained in love’ is, in a sense, the highest level of the fear of God, located where love and fear intertwine.

It is the foundation and distillation of Jewish life.

When we love, we cling to and are absorbed into the Source of life.

When we fear, we are afraid that we may be severed from that Source—which would mean that we were no longer alive”

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Learning from the Tanya, p. 139, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz.