Are You for Real? | Rabbi Yussie Zakutinsky

One of the great dreams of every parent for their child is that the child should grow to become a ירא שמיים, a God-fearing Jew. Yiras Shomayim is one of the great goals of life. The question is: How does one know that one’s Yiras Shomayim is authentic and holy? In other words, there are a lot of fears in the world. You know, there are people that are afraid of the dark. There are people that have a phobia of spiders. How do you know that if a person's avoiding Muktzah and a person's avoiding seeing the wrong things and a person's avoiding doing Aveiros, maybe they just have a fear of punishment, maybe they just have a phobia of Muktzah. How does one know that their religiosity is, in truth, a holy expression of Yiras Shomayim? Says a vort from the Mei Hashiloach, from R’ Mordechai Yosef of Izhbitza, It’s not just of vort. The truth is it's a key to life. It says in pasuk, regarding the Meyaldos, the Jewish midwives, going back to Parshas Shemos, that they didn't listen to Pharaoh. Pharaoh wanted them to kill the boys. They didn't listen, obviously. And the pasuk says, That the midwives feared Hashem, they had Yiras Shomayim, and Hashem made for them homes, Hashem made for them houses. The simple taytsh, simple translation is, as Rashi says, that the reward for their fear of Heaven, for their Yiras Shomayim was that Hashem gave them illustrious families. They would have Malchus. Kingship would come from them. The priesthood would come from them. ויעש להם בתים. Said the Izhbitzer like this, The pasuk is saying something deeper. The pasuk is saying, How do you know if your fear, if your avoidance of the wrong things, is coming from a healthy, holy Yiras Shomayim? As opposed to otherwise. How do I know that the midwives truly feared Hashem and it was coming from a holy, healthy place of Yiras Shomayim? It’s because their Yiras Shomayim produced for them Yishuv Hadaas, a sense of peace and a sense of tranquility and a sense of calm, which is what a house represents. When you enter into your home, hopefully, it should come with a sense of peace and tranquility. ותראינה המיילדות את האלוקים the sign, the Siman, of true Yiras Shomayim is when the Yiras Shomayim produces בתים, יישוב הדעת. If a person is going through life in Avodas Hashem and keeping Mitzvos and avoiding Aveiros, but it's coming with anxiety and it's causing pressure and the person feels overwhelmed by that, they have to reengage with Yiddishkeit. That's not coming from a healthy place. It's not trying to just avoid pitfalls and trying to avoid Gehenom and so on out of self-preservation. It's about trying to connect to Hashem and trying to grow closer in that experience and avoid severing that experience. When a person realizes that, then their Avodas Hashem results in Yishuv Hadaas and peace of mind and a sense of accomplishment and a holistic sense of peace. That's a healthy Yiras Shomayim. ותראינה המיילדות את האלוקים ויעש להם בתים. Hashem should bless us that in every single effort that we do in our Avodas Hashem we should be zoche to experience more Yishuv Hadaas, more Menuchas Hanefesh, more Simchas Hachaim, more sense of accomplishment, and that should only propel us even further in our Avodas Hashem, to go from strength to strength.