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The supreme religious emotions are love and awe – in that order. We are commanded to “Love the LORD your GOD” We are also commanded to experience the feelings associated with the Hebrew word yirah, which means “awe, fear, reverence”. This is how Maimonides puts it: “When a person contemplates His great and wondrous works and creatures and from them obtains a glimpse of His wisdom, which is incomparable and infinite, he will immediately love Him, praise Him, glorify Him, and long with an exceeding longing to know His great name … And when he ponders these matters, he will recoil frightened, and realise that he is a small creature, lowly and obscure, endowed with slight and slender intelligence, standing in the presence of Him who is perfect in knowledge” (Yesodei HaTorah 2:2).

The supreme expression of love in Judaism is the Shema with its injunction: “Love the LORD your GOD with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might.” The supreme expression of awe is the Amidah prayer, when we stand consciously in the presence of GOD. The basic movement of the morning and evening prayers is first, to climb to the peak of love, the Shema, and from there to the summit of awe, the Amidah.