The angry person is overcome by all forms of hell. Talmud Nedarim 22a

Transcription

1 READING FOR ANGER Ka as / by Alan Morinis The angry person is overcome by all forms of hell. Talmud Nedarim 22a When I asked my Mussar teacher, Rabbi Perr, to suggest one soul-trait that I should focus on in my teaching, he immediately suggested anger. Why anger? I asked. Because everyone has it and everyone regrets it, he answered. Maybe he was thinking of the teaching of ibn Hasdai: begins with madness and ends with regret. 1 We know about anger. Not a day goes by without some gruesome news report about a deadly incident fuelled by anger. A disgruntled worker kills people at his former place of employment. A jilted spouse exacts revenge. A student shoots teachers and fellow students. Then come the tears and the searing remorse. But most of us know about anger from less newsworthy but equally tainted situations closer to home, such as domestic violence, road rage, verbal and psychological abuse (especially of the young and the elderly), and the spluttering outcome of uncontrolled impatience. We begin our exploration of anger with an investigation of some teachings from tradition that help us understand the nature and importance of anger to us, starting with a teaching in the Talmud 2 that says, Rabbi Ilai said: A person is known by their cup, their purse and their anger. It sounds better in Hebrew, because cup is kos, purse is kees and anger is ka as. Knowing how a person handles his or her cup (i.e., how they drink), purse (i.e., how they spend money), and anger gives you enough insight to be able to know the person. We learn from this that, of all the emotions, how we deal with anger is the most defining of who we really are. There are many words for anger in the Torah, including ka as, charon, rogez and cheimah. Many of these refer to burning fire and billowing smoke. Ka as is the term the Mussar teachers usually use. The word ka as can mean both anger and sorrow. The reason that connection is made should be fairly apparent to us. 1 Abraham ibn Hasdai was a Spanish-Hebrew poet and philosopher (d. 1540), whose adaptation from the Arabic of the Buddhist tale that became Barlaam and Josaphat (1518) was published in Constantinople under the title Ben ha-melekh ve ha-nazir [ The Prince and the Ascetic ]. 2 Eruvin 65b 1

2 The Talmud 3 equates anger with the sin of idol worship. This comparison offers a great condemnation of anger because idol worship is one of only three sins 4 that are judged to be so heinous that the Torah demands that a Jew choose death rather than violate them. But this association of anger with idolatry also reveals why anger is such a frightful power. When a person loses his or her temper, he or she becomes overwhelmed and overpowered by the emotion of anger. By allowing that to happen, a person yields authority over his or her life to this raging emotion, and it is then the power of anger that the angry person serves. By authorizing anger to domineer and control him or her, the angry person supplants and negates the governing role of God. More simply, you can have only one god on the altar. If it s anger, it s not God. To add weight to this view, we are told that the greatest prophet the Jewish people has ever known Moses, of course was elevated through 49 gates of purification, and lacked only one final perfected attribute. His failing was anger. In the Book of Numbers/BaMidbar (20:8,10-12) we read: Take the staff, and you [Moses] and Aaron should assemble the people. Speak to the rock and it will bring forth its water... Moses and Aaron assembled the congregation before the rock, and he said to them: Listen you rebels! Can we produce water from this rock? Moses lifted his hand and struck the rock twice with his staff, and water gushed out. There is a midrash 5 that identifies exactly what Moses did wrong here. In responding to the people s request for water, he said, Listen you rebels. This remark was clearly uttered in anger, and that is taken to reflect a lack of faith because someone with absolute faith in God approaches whatever confronts him or her with equanimity, knowing that it all comes from God for a purpose. Someone who gets angry as Moses did is therefore lacking this degree of faith, and that is why God told Moses, you did not have enough faith in me. Some say that Moses s failing was not in what he said but in hitting the rock, also an act done in anger. By delivering a blow to the rock, Moses made it appear as if he, not God, had been the one who found the water and caused it to flow. Had he instead gotten the water to flow by speaking to the rock (as he was told to do), that would have shown this generation, who had not seen all the miracles of the Exodus, that it was completely God s doing. Hitting the rock in anger, Moses missed an opportunity to have a positive effect on the people s faith. In either case, it was because of Moses s anger that God prevented him from entering the Promised Land to which he led the people. God says in Deuteronomy: 3 Shabbat 105b 4 The other two are murder and prohibited relations (i.e., incest/adultery). 5 Hebrew, exposition: refers to an interpretative approach to scripture that seeks to define the full meaning of biblical law, or to derive a moral principle, lesson or theological concept from the biblical text. 2

3 Because you trespassed against me in the midst of the children of Israel at the waters of Merivah of Kadesh, in the wilderness of Tzin; because you didn't sanctify me in the midst of the children of Israel. So you will see the land from a distance, but you may not enter the land I am giving to the people of Israel. Such is the scope and the permanence of the damage done by anger. You may have read or heard contemporary psychological ideas that there is such a thing as healthy anger, even going so far as to say that efforts to contain anger are damaging to one s own health. These sources tell us that the way to deal with anger is to discharge it, let it all out. Empirical studies have not supported this belief. In fact, evidence suggests that the expression of anger only serves to increase anger and actually produces negative health consequences! Harriett Lerner, in her popular book The Dance of, maintains that venting anger may serve to maintain, and even rigidify, the old rules and patterns in a relationship, thus ensuring that change does not occur. That s hardly what anyone working in the way of Mussar would hope to bring about. Yet the Mussar teachers do say there is such a thing as healthy anger. Even though the chapter on anger in the Mussar classic Orchot Tzaddikim begins with the unequivocal statement, is an evil trait, later we read that:... one must sometimes conduct himself in accordance with this trait, like when it is necessary to chastise the wicked, or instill fear in the members of his household, or to cast his fear upon his students. We might well question some of the circumstances that are brought forward as examples here, but the idea holds, which is that in some situations, anger is an appropriate response. I think of being confronted with injustice as a good example of a situation in which anger might be the appropriate emotion. But Orchot Tzaddikim continues on to deliver the essential teaching on anger in the Mussar view:... when one is angry with transgressors, he must weigh the extent of his anger.... All of man s actions require the proper measure. The wisdom in this teaching lies in its realism. It doesn t ask us to set ourselves the goal of being totally and forever rid of any semblance of anger if we want to be good people. You ve got anger within you and you might as well accept that fact. But you are guided to focus your efforts on where you get angry and in what measure, and on whether you retain control or not. Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato writes in The Way of God that every difficult situation any of us face in life is a test that is provided as the proving ground for your spiritual ascent. From this perspective, every situation in which you feel provoked to anger can be seen to be a spiritual assignment given to you to work out. Often, it will be the same thing that provokes us to anger, time and again. I know a woman who yells at the people in the parking lot who are slow to vacate the stalls. She s been doing that for years. And so 3

4 working on anger can be a long-term activity. We can only hope that along the way we don t let it cause damage to ourselves or others. When you next feel anger coming up, the next thought could be this is a test. Perhaps you can draw inspiration to keep at the task from the saying in the Talmud that goes an angry person s life isn t life. 6 The Mussar teachers offer another valuable insight by identifying that the source of anger lies in an attitude of arrogance. That tie-in is not immediately apparent to most of us, but it is implicit in a teaching of the Ramban: 7 Once you have distanced yourself from anger, the quality of humility will enter your heart. That s an important insight. There is a relationship between humility and anger, and the two cannot co-exist in your heart. If you are angry, you are not humble. If you are humble, you will not be angry, or as Orchot Tzaddikim puts it more wisely, your anger will be only very negligible over a period of many years. To understand this connection between anger and humility, we have to recall that in the Mussar view, arrogance is nothing but a twisted manifestation of a lack of self-esteem. A humble person is one who has no doubt as to the space that is right for him or her to occupy (whether that be large, medium or small) and occupies it with contentment. That understanding is at the heart of a pithy teaching on this subject given by Rabbi Elyakim Krumbein: 8... praiseworthy humility is always associated with healthy self-esteem. Lack of self-esteem leads to the damaging feeling of worthlessness. Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe 9 then takes the matter the next important step by outlining how a lack of personal self-esteem connects to anger: One who craves attention from others has not yet found himself; he is unaware of his true worth. Lacking self-esteem, he depends on the opinion of others. He hungers for their praise, for without their appreciation he feels worthless. When people fail to applaud him he becomes helpless, and therefore, hostile and angry. I think this is accurate, especially the remarkable recognition that anger reveals dependency. There is another connection between arrogance and anger. When anger starts to build within us, we are usually beset by a sense of righteousness. That sort of righteousness is 6 Pesachim 113b 7 Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, Nachmanides, in the letter he wrote to his son that is known as Iggeret ha Ramban. 8 Mussar for Moderns, shiur #5; an internet list of Yeshivat Har Etzion 9 Alei Shur, Vol. I, p.42 4

5 anything but humble. Think of the kinds of things you are likely to say to yourself to justify your anger. Isn t it things such as: I am right! How dare they! I don t deserve this! I expect better than this!... and so on. Maybe there is real truth in what you say in this context. Maybe you don t deserve this. Maybe they are totally wrong, etc. But even crediting that those are correct perceptions, do they in themselves justify a display of anger? No, they don t. There are alternative ways to correct someone s error or take care of yourself besides bursting out in rage. The fact that these stimuli are allowed to trigger anger reveals, once again, who it is that has been ensconced on the inner altar. It is none other than the ego, and all the selfrighteousness with which the ego justifies itself reveals and leads to anything but humility. Mussar comes to teach us this about anger, so we will understand it better, and know where it comes from, and what it leads to, and what we can do about it. 5

6 MEETING FOR ANGER 1. Invocation 5 minutes The facilitator chooses one person to read the following passage: Hear, my son, the instruction [Mussar] of your father and don t forsake the teaching [Torah] of your mother (Mishlei 1:8). Get into the habit of always speaking calmly to everyone. This will prevent you from anger, a serious character flaw which causes people to sin. As our Rabbis said (Nedarim 22a): Whoever flares up in anger is subject to the discipline of Gehinnom as it says (Kohelet 11:10), Cast out anger (ka as) from your heart, and [by doing this] remove evil from your flesh. Evil here means Gehinnom, as we read (Mishlei 16:4):... and the wicked are destined for the day of evil. Once you have distanced yourself from anger, the quality of humility will enter your heart. This radiant quality is the finest of all admirable traits (see Avodah Zarah 20b), because (Mishlei 22:4), Following humility comes the fear of HaShem. from Iggeret Ha Ramban, the letter of Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman (1194 c.1270) to his son 2. Review of the previous practice: Humility 15 minutes Discuss any experiences arising from the focus on humility that was given in the previous session. 3. The Text Discussion 45 minutes 1. Where have you experienced anger in your life, and has it been accompanied by regret? OBJECTIVE: To make personal the theoretical point that anger is pervasive and painful. 2. Why do you think our sages singled out cup, purse, and anger as being so indicative of a person s character? What could you learn about a person from the way that she or he handles these three elements? Or, more to the point, what would people know about you from the way that you handle these three things? OBJECTIVE: To bring out the importance of anger as a determinant of character. 6

7 3. In Hebrew, the word ka as can mean both anger and sorrow. What do you think is the connection between the two meanings attached to this one word? OBJECTIVE: To draw the connection between anger and its effects. 4. How would you express in your own words the equation the Jewish tradition draws between anger and the sin of idol worship? Is the message clear to you? OBJECTIVE: To situate the discussion of anger in the spiritual, and not just psychological, realm. 5. Do you agree that there is such a thing as healthy or appropriate anger? OBJECTIVE: To clarify that in Mussar thinking, the trait itself is never a problem, but the level of the trait, and how and when it is expressed, is the key thing. 6. How do you understand the lesson that anger reveals dependency? OBJECTIVE: to personalize and internalize the relationship between sense of self and experience of anger. 7. In Jewish teachings, anger is linked to ego. Do you see this connection? Can you express it in your own words, or illustrate it from your own experience (of self or other)? OBJECTIVE: To reveal the relational aspect of anger, that it doesn t exist within an individual independent of the qualities of relationship that also exist in the situation. 4. Practice The facilitator is to prepare in advance enough pieces of paper on which are written the words: anochi afar v efer / I am dust and ashes. You can do that by copying the following text box onto a blank document as many as you need for your group: 7

8 Anochi afar v efer I am dust and ashes The Season of Mussar Program One of the clearest and most valuable Mussar lessons in regard to anger is that anger is tied to ego. The more anger a person displays, the higher in their field of inner vision is their own ego. As a result, one of the main counterpoints given to help deal with anger is to cultivate humility. You will be given a piece of paper on which are written the words spoken by Abraham (Genesis 18:27): anochi afar v efer I am dust and ashes Over the next week, place this note in your pocket. Keep it with you always. Whenever you feel anger rising, remember the note you are carrying it. Hold it. Touch it. Read it. Let the recollection of mortality and earthiness reduce whatever ego-induced affront you may be feeling. b. Accounting of the Soul With the change to a new middah, you ll be changing your focus in your Accounting of the Soul practice, too. The phrase to use in your morning recitation now relates to anger: brings forth all forms of hell. You may recognize that this is a variation on the statement from the Talmud that is quoted above, from Nedarim 22a. Now, too, bring the focus of your evening journaling to spotlight issues of anger. Unfortunately, these generally are not difficult to find. 5. Closing One person read the following passage: The great Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev awoke one morning and before beginning his prayers said to himself: Levi Yitzchak, today you are going to behave correctly you are going to be a good person! But then he sighed and said: But Levi Yitzchak said that yesterday as well and he wasn t such a good person for the rest of the day. And then he said to himself: Never mind yesterday, today Levi Yitzchak truly means it! 8

9 With that in mind, all read together: May my heart be cleansed of anger. May I emulate my Creator and be slow to anger. May my eyes see the good in all. May I give the other the benefit of the doubt. May I be a maker of peace. Amen. Confirm time and place for the next meeting 9