Valley Beit Midrash

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 demonstrate 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