Fear

…of the Boogie Man

I was sitting in the back seat of a car waiting at a red light in a Chassidic neighborhood in Brooklyn and saw a pair of ultra-chassids. I decided by the look of their specific style black coats, earlocks and gait, that they were of authority in their circles. I locked eyes momentarily with the one who I decided was the superior of the two. I knew he did not and could not know me, and I did not know him. Regardless, I imagined an instant story emerge.

I was then of trimmed beard and without head covering. He tried to convey anger and create fear in me for not covering my head and for trimming my beard and trying to look non-Jewish, or not keeping the True Jew look. I concurrently felt a flash of fear course through me. God’s rep caught me.

I will suffer.

Most authority figures in religious fundamentalist constructs play on fear. They ride on the coattails of god’s fear tuxedo. Displaying anger functions as a tool to instill fear of implicit punishment and impending consequence. The fear, however, is effective only if there's what to be afraid of. If you think I fear you can punish me for disobedience by making me lose money, my job, customers, social acceptance, your acceptance, or your inflicting physical pain on me, then you can bore your intense eyes into me to make me afraid of you, effectively.

If, however, there's nothing from you that has any currency with me, then your huffing and puffing don't deserve fear and will have no bearing on what I do. Perhaps in an initial moment, when you try to get me to be afraid of you by aiming primal signals of angry eyes, rigid body and rapt attention, I might have to process a primal defensive reaction. But the process would be fleeting.

Perhaps, in my past conditioning, a similar drill gaze preceded actual uncomfortable consequence for me. A parent, when I was young, could cause me physical pain by hitting me, by removing comforts they provide, or by inflicting on me psychological pain by showing disappointment in or judging me.

A religious authority figure could angrily evoke fear because he purports, and is socially accepted, to represent god, the giver and taker of all, who could unleash all sorts of havoc on me if I stray from The Truth.

Now? They’ve got nothing on me and can’t physically hurt me. I make my own comforts, and no longer consider them a source of love or acceptance. They don’t influence or scare me. I may still get triggered for a moment but I let it course through me as I logically guide the initial fear to leave as quickly as it came, knowing rabbinical or parental stink eyes are impotent.

Religious authority figures are like puppets, caricatures and movie actors. I might for a second get caught up in their act, but fleetingly.

The initial flash of fear comes from the phantom limb of what those people represent. There is no limb, and yet the limb hurts. The brain is still wired for the limb. Rewiring the brain, creating habitual thought patterns to retrain the brain that these people and their truth cannot cause pain, is necessary. 

So, it was with surprise and amusement that I observed how I reacted in those few moments in the car at the red light. An initial jolt of fear. For and of nothing. A relic of my past. About innocuous and personal things like head covering and beard hairs, things that in the past were to me considered cardinal sins and are now meaningless.

A Rabbi authority, someone I did not personally know, glared at me. I reacted and had to process that.

The trauma was perhaps like deeply embedded shrapnel, setting off a metal detector.