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Who and What Should I Fear: Early Rabbinic Views
March 4, 2021 @ 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm MST
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ABOUT THIS EVENT: Although we generally think of emotions as experiences of individuals, a great deal of recent research demonstrates that emotions are often socially formed and serve social roles. Societies define when certain emotions are appropriate and often cultivate individuals to experience these emotions in particular circumstances. By endorsing or condemning the experiencing and displaying of particular emotions, groups seek to regulate the behavior of their members. A prime example of the effort at shaping emotional experience is how societies through a variety of media, written, visual, oral, deploy the emotion of “fear.” A group can come to be defined by the people or developments it should fear. The politics of fear is rampant in our world today, as the events of the past year amply demonstrates. Cultures, religions, and societies, however, have endorsed or condemned “fear” over the course of human history. “Fear” is the most commonly mentioned emotion throughout the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). Although there has been a good deal written about “fear” in the Tanakh, including both the fear of God and the fear of humans, the limited analysis of references to “fear” in rabbinic texts has focused primarily upon the fear of the divine, with little investigation of what these texts say about interpersonal fear. In my shiur I will examine what early rabbinic texts say about who and what we ought and ought not to fear. We will come to see how these texts seek to shape the emotions and behaviors of both individuals and groups.
ABOUT THIS SPEAKER: Professor Joel Gereboff is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University. He has served as department chair and faculty head of Religious Studies and was the co-founder of Jewish Studies. He received his Ph.D. from Brown University in History of Judaism in Late Antiquity and his BA from New York University in Philosophy.
Dr. Gereboff’s scholarship focuses on issues in Jewish ethics, early rabbinic Judaism and American Judaism. His most recent project deals with the study of Judaism and the emotions, with particular attention to anger, shame, and hate. He has served in Arizona on a number of projects related to bioethics, including service on several hospital ethics committees. His teaching has included visiting appointments at the University of California, San Diego, California State University, Northridge, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles, and The Academy for Jewish Religion, California.
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