Anger in the Pocket

"We will only be mighty when we turn our enemy into our friend." ~ Rabbi Sydney Mintz, Congregation Emanu-El

"Last year, a week before my son’s bar mitzvah, I brought his new tallis to a tailor near our house, and I asked him to sew on a special piece of cloth.  Two days before the bar mitzvah I came back to pick it up, and found that, despite my instructions, the tailor had sewed the cloth onto the tallis on the wrong side.  It looked awful, I was angry, he was angry, I snatched it out of his hands, paid him for his work, and stormed out. 
In the spirit of true confessions, today being Yom Kippur, I have to say it was not my finest hour.

Now, perhaps, a Hasidic rebbe would have handled it differently.  There is a story told of Rabbi Refael of Barshad who loved everything that came from the land of Israel.  Once, some friends sent him woolen cloth woven from the first shearing of sheep in the Holy Land.  He loved the woolen cloth so much that he called his tailor and asked him to turn the material into a tallit katan – you know, the small undergarment with fringes that Orthodox men wear. 
The tailor cut the material, sewed the hem and folded it so that he could cut out, in the middle, the opening for the neck.  But by accident, he folded it over once extra; so instead of one hole in the center of the garment, there were two holes!
Full of dread and fear, the tailor returned the precious material, and, in a shaking voice, told Rabbi Refael what had happened.  Much to his surprise, the face of the rabbi lit up and he exclaimed, ‘Of course—this is how it was supposed to be! This is no mistake! There should be two holes in the garment. The first is for the head, like any other tallit katan, and the second is to see if Refael would get angry.”

From angry feelings to angry words to angry demonstrations to violent acts of anger – it seems at times that the whole world, including our own society, is beset by rage and its deadly results. 
We all know that anger is damaging – not only to those against whom it is unleashed, but also to the person experiencing the anger.  Scientists tell us about cortisol rushing through the body.  Angry outbursts raise blood pressure, anger leads to strokes and heart attacks.  And it is contagious too.  Try arguing with an angry person, especially a close friend or relative, and see what happens to your own blood pressure.   Try listening for 10 minutes to certain talk radio stations, and see how quickly the rage and outrage infects your own mood.  I work as a chaplain at Georgetown University Hospital, and I am always amazed when I walk into patients’ rooms, to see the TV on with violent news stories or panels of pundits provoking each other.  How do people expect to heal, absorbing all this anger as they lie in bed?

We live in a world that seems eager to stir up anger, but equally eager to reject anger as a valid emotion.  Quite possibly, that ambivalent attitude towards anger comes from our monotheistic religions.  On the one hand, anger is viewed very negatively by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  Christianity names anger as one of the seven deadly sins.  Islam and Judaism both teach that anger is at the root of much evil, that it removes a person from God. Both Judaism and Islam praise the one who is slow to anger, and they have similar teachings about what it means to be strong: the person who is strong is the one who can control himself at a time of anger. 
On the other hand, all three religions differentiate between anger that stems from personal pride or arrogance, and righteous anger – anger on behalf of God’s truth.  And sometimes, it seems, violent anger on behalf of religious truth receives a nod of approval.  So there is some ambivalence there. 

This morning I’d like to take a closer look at our Jewish tradition on the subject of anger, and see what wisdom it has to offer us.

We Jews have taken a lot of flak for having a God that expresses anger, and that acts in angry ways.  How many times have we heard Christians distinguish between the God of love in the New Testament and the – quote, unquote, “angry, vengeful God” of the Old Testament!  But whereas Christianity tends to project anger onto the more distant God of the Hebrew Bible, and Islam considers anger to be the work of Satan, Judaism seems comfortable locating anger in God Himself, the source of All. 
Let’s consider the episode in the Torah that gives rise to a core prayer traditional recited  on Yom Kippur – the 13 attributes of God’s compassion, which begins:  Adonai Adonai, El rahum v’hanun.... The prayer itself comes from an incident in the Book of Exodus which has plenty of anger.  You know the story – in some ways, it’s our Jewish “original sin” story.  Moses has been up on Mount Sinai for 40 days; down below, what happens?
The Children of Israel have grown impatient, or scared that he hasn’t returned.  They build a Golden Calf, they sing and dance. 
God is so incensed with what’s going on, so jealous, so enraged with betrayal and disappointment – that he threatens to destroy the entire people and start over with Moses.
And then, after Moses has smashed the Tablets and shown his own anger with the Israelites, there comes the great scene where God tells Moses to stand in the cleft of a rock. 
God comes down in a cloud, and as it says in the Torah: vayityatzev imo sham.  He stood with him there.   God stood with Moses, or Moses stood with God.

For how long?  How long did God and Moses stand there together?

The Torah doesn’t say, so take a moment to imagine it for yourself....

I think it was long enough for God to finally rethink who God is.  For God’s anger to calm.  For God to reach down to the essence of God ... and find that anger is not the essence, compassion and forgiveness are the essence.  This is not a cheap “God is Love” sentiment, a “forgive and forget” moment – it’s a hard-won forgiveness and reconnection.  Anger has not been excised, but it has softened into God’s own description of God’s self, as erech apayim, “slow to anger.”

Is that the last time God or Moses gets angry in the Torah?  Hardly.  Indeed the whole book of Numbers could be retitled, “How to Get God Angry at You in the Wilderness.”  And at times, Moses and God seem to take turns getting angry with the kids in the back seat on a very long car trip. 
What are we to make of these portrayals of God as being angry?  Recently, Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, discussed the notion of God’s anger or vengefulness.  He noted that this is a case where imitating God is NOT recommended.  Indeed, in the book of Leviticus, God actually forbids us humans to take vengeance.   (Lev. 19: 18). 
Rabbi Sacks notes that the Torah is trying to remove vengeance from human hands.   He writes: “It is G-d, not man, who is entitled to exercise it. To be sure, there are times when G-d commands human beings to act on His behalf – the battles against the Midianites and the Amalekites are two obvious examples. But once prophecy ceases, as it has done since late Second Temple times, so too does violence in the name of G-d.”
This teaching has often been forgotten.  But perhaps our knowing that vengeance is God’s option is what allows us to lay down our own anger.  God is not a model for us in this regard, but a safety valve, and an assurance of future justice.  God’s anger removes from us the temptation to play God ourselves. 
So the next time you hear mention of the angry, vengeful God of the Old Testament, you can agree with the speaker but modify it to: the angry, vengeful, loving, forgiving, God of the Hebrew Bible, the God of everything.

The prophet Isaiah reports God as saying, b’shetzef ketzef, in a brief fit of anger, I, God,  hid my face from Israel just for a moment.  But then, says God, b’hesed olam richamtich – with everlasting love, I will take you back.
Our rabbis in the Talmud at one point started speculating whether God Himself prays, and if so, WHAT does God pray for?  One rabbi answered:   Yes, God does pray, and this is God’s prayer:  May it be My will that My mercy suppresses My anger ... so that I may deal with My children with compassion.
Thus, Jewish tradition seems to regard God’s anger – like human anger – as normal, inevitable, and even acceptable, as long as it is slow in coming, short-lasting, based on valid reasons, and accompanied by reconciliation and reconnection. 

This might be why, of all the sins that we enumerate on Yom Kippur in the Al Het, you would think we would see, “For the sin which we have committed before Thee by being angry.”
But we don’t. 
True, there are plenty of sins mentioned that we might commit while being angry or because we’re angry – hardening our hearts, slander, insolence, baseless hatred, running to do evil.   But anger itself is not a sin, it’s a natural human emotion.  It’s what we do with the anger that causes us to sin.  Which is why being slow to anger – counting to 10, or 100 – can keep us from causing too much damage. 

Our Hasidic rabbis, masters of psychology in their own right, recognized the enormous damage that anger can do in human relations.  But rather than seeking to eliminate it, more often they worked to tame and redirect anger.
Here’s an example:
R. Pinchas of Koretz said: “For many years I wrestled with my Anger, until finally I conquered him and placed him in my pocket. Now I take him out only when I need him. But I am so angry with him, that I never want to take him out again!”

What might this mean?

I think Rabbi Pinchas is playing with the notion that we can compartmentalize our anger.  One the one hand, we can place our anger in our pocket – where we carry it with us, but we have control over it.  On the other hand, perhaps that too is an illusion – perhaps we can never completely master anger – after all, Rabbi Pinchas is angry with his anger.  So some part of that anger is not in the pocket after all.

A similar approach is taken by the Baal Shem Tov, the originator of Hasidism, who was once hired to teach the children of a Jewish landowner.  But, said the landowner, the only house available for the Baal Shem Tov was a house that was thought to be haunted by demons. The Baal Shem Tov said that he would live in it anyway.  What did he do?  He assigned the demons to the attic.  And when the demons laughed, he scolded them and they became silent. 

What does this odd little story tell us?  Unexpectedly, the Baal Shem Tov does not try to expel or exorcise the demons – and by demons he means any unwanted emotion – anger, jealousy, depression.  Instead, the Baal Shem Tov gives them the attic – acknowledging that they exist, but relegating them to a confined space in the psyche.  Without getting caught up in these negative emotions, without reacting to them or acting on them, the Baal Shem Tov is able to contain the negative emotions, and even quiet them down.  

These negative emotions are not sinful, but we must know how to handle them.  
Judaism teaches us to accept anger – both ours and other people’s – rather than outlaw it, to give it a place in the attic, to refrain from acting on it, and to seek out what element of that anger can be harnessed in service of God.  Let us learn from our tradition and work to create a world that is slower to anger, and even slower to act out of anger, that tucks anger into a pocket and quiets its demons.

Let me close with one last story, a story told by Rabbi Joseph Gelberman, alav ha-shalom, who passed away last week at the age of 95. 
He liked to tell the story of a young Samurai warrior who came to see his Zen master and asked a favor.  “I am puzzled,” said the warrior. “Could you please explain to me heaven and hell?”
The master exploded in rage: “Teach you about heaven and hell?  That’s ridiculous.  You’re an ignorant fool – You can’t even keep your sword from rusting.”
The young man was taken aback, and then he got angry, thinking, “Who can insult a Samurai warrior and live?”  And with teeth clenched and his blood boiling in fury, he drew his sword.  The master looked at him and said gently, “That’s hell.”
The young man thought for a moment, sheathed his sword, and bowed to the master.  Looking into his old, beaming face, he felt more love and compassion than he had ever felt in his entire life.  And the master raised his finger and said, “That’s heaven.”

Gmar Hatimah Tovah."

~   Rabbi Gilah Langner