blogs/rabbigoldberg

Once upon a time, a religious Jew was driving across the country. In Texas, he stopped at a diner, sat at the counter, and ordered some coffee. A cowboy sitting next to him asked, "Where are you from, stranger?” “New York.” “Well, partner, let me buy you a beer.” The man said, “Thanks, but I can’t.” The cowboy said, “Well, then, let me share my ham sandwich with you.” “Oh, no, I can’t eat that.” The cowboy kept offering various items from the menu, and the traveling Jew declined each and every one. Finally, in anger, the cowboy pulled out his gun and said, “Listen, you ungrateful good-for-nothing, you’re gonna have a beer with me or I’m gonna blow your head off.” With shaking hands, the man takes the beer and drinks. Then he says, “You know, as long as you have that gun on me, pass the ham sandwich.”

Anger is quite a thing. How easily can ordinary situations escalate when we let our anger get the better of us. How often do we come by anger honestly, and how infrequently does anger actually improve a situation. 

It occurred to me last spring just how much anger I’ve felt and witnessed in the past year. One of the most striking things I witnessed in my trip to Israel was a demonstration of anger. I was walking down a Jerusalem street when I passed a group of people carrying Israeli flags, heading to an anti-government demonstration that was taking place near the Knesset. A young man who happened to be driving by pulled over on the busy street, jumped out and started screaming at these strangers, calling them traitors to the country and wishing that the next terror attack should be on their children. I don’t know what was going on for that man to say such a terrible thing to a stranger. Almost certainly he is closely connected to someone who suffered from the October 7 attack or its aftermath. So while he likely has come by that anger honestly, it was still striking to me to see how easily that anger was provoked. 

Here at home, too, there is plenty of anger that I imagine many of us have experienced since our last Rosh Hashanah: anger about terrorism and antisemitism and the political situation and many other things. Part of why we witness so much anger is that anger is a very powerful motivator to turn people out to vote. Then, of course, there are all the “normal” sources of anger: professional and personal setbacks, family troubles, people who disappoint us. And, some of this anger might be the emotional residue of the pandemic and the way it disrupted so much of life for so many of us, especially our young people. 

Even still, anger is natural and has its place. An old Yiddish proverb compares anger to salt: used sparingly, both can enhance a situation, but even a little too much is destructive. And our emotions usually don’t hurt us or others; what we do with them makes the difference.  So the question isn’t how to eliminate anger, but rather how to control it rather than letting our anger control us. 

The psychological literature has much to say on this topic. One psychologist talks about “emotional flooding,” when the amygdala section of our brain takes over and presents an automatic response to an unexpected negative event that we perceive as a threat. As our emotions are heightened, we manifest a disorganized and usually ineffective response to the problem as we prepare to fight or flight, which sometimes leads to unexpected behaviors. If you’ve ever surprised yourself by how you reacted to something, that was probably your amygdala taking over. Acting this way, of course, harms relationships and impair decision making, neither of which usually helps resolve the matter at hand. 

Other psychologists distinguish between two types of anger. The first, core anger, emerges in response to a violation of who we understand ourselves to be in the world. Core anger can inspire us to speak up for ourselves and set boundaries that protect us. This kind of anger can emerge from a deep commitment to justice, care, and love. But a different kind of anger, defensive anger, protects us not from real violations but from other, scarier emotions, like grief, shame, or fear. The goal is to work through this defensive anger so that we can get through to the core emotions at the heart of a situation. 

Contemporary psychology, and common sense, offer a number of practical suggestions for dealing with anger. One is to count to ten or thirty, just to put some space between the stimulus and our response, so that we may react in a more considered way. Another is to write down our feelings, getting out of the committee meeting in our head by actually putting words to paper. 

I had occasion to try this recently. I had read an article that really bothered me. More than that, I thought that the author was bigoted and lazy in his thinking. I could focus on little else. So, I sat down at my computer to compose a letter in response. I wrote out exactly why what this writer had said was so problematic in what I thought was a spirited and cogent way. I then set this email aside and did not send it. (Pro-tip if you consider doing this yourself: make sure not to put the recipient's email in the “To” box, lest you accidentally hit send!) I then let this note sit for a day. I calmed down and realized, based on specific past experience, that sending this letter would likely be counter-productive, and that the best thing to do here was actually nothing. The note is still sitting in my drafts. But writing it helped me process and release my feelings, such that I could calmly move on from this provocation. 

There is a certain virtue that appears in the Jewish ethical literature that can be especially helpful when dealing with our anger. Some of the virtues I’ve spoken about in previous years can, in their own ways, help us manage our anger: humility, gratitude, and kindness, for example. But another virtue, it seems to me, can, when cultivated, help us live with any kind of anger we may experience: equanimity. 

The Jewish ethical literature calls this by a variety of terms, including menuchat hanefesh, repose of the soul, and yishuv hada’at, or settling of the awareness.  These sources mean by equanimity a certain inner balance that exists alongside the ups and downs of the world. This does not mean we no longer experience turmoil or strong emotions, only that we become much better equipped to experience them without being thrown into emotional disarray. 

Like many of these virtues, equanimity is a midpoint between two extremes. One is agitation, where even the smallest of triggers is enough to set off uncontrolled, unproductive bursts of emotion and activity. At the other end is a kind of obliviousness, where we become so detached from the world around us that even things that should elicit a reaction from us don’t. Between these two extremes, equanimity is the quality of being deeply aware of what is going on around us, while not letting those things set us off balance. 

In this sense, equanimity is a kind of independence of the soul, where our emotional state is not dependent on the actions of others. A key indicator of equanimity is a similar lack of reactiveness to both praise and insult. We experience each for what they are, without letting either impact our sense of self or our focus in that moment.

I once attended a Shabbat service where the rabbi invited the rather large crowd to engage in some quiet meditation. Just as we were settling in, a small child suddenly started screaming, puncturing the silence that was beginning to envelop the group. The room broke into laughter, which the rabbi let die down, before calmly saying: let’s try to be a little less reactive. Equanimity in that situation would mean hearing that child’s cries, but then remaining focused on the meditative task at hand, trusting that whoever was responsible for that child would attend to it without hundreds of other people needing to react. 

I was introduced to one of my favorite Talmudic stories by a teacher of mine, who used it to describe how she was dealing with her grief following the death of her husband. It goes like this:  Once, the sage Rabban Gamliel was traveling by boat and saw another boat hit a rock, shatter to pieces, and sink. Rabban Gamliel was greatly distressed to witness this, especially knowing that the great Rabbi Akiva was on board. But, sometime later, Rabbi Akiva appeared in the study law as usual. Thrilled to see him alive, Rabbi Gamliel asked:  “My son, what brought you up out of the water?” Rabbi Akiva calmly explained: “A plank from the boat came to me, and before each and every wave that came toward me, I bowed my head.” 

What a wonderful metaphor for equanimity. It’s not that Rabbi Akiva didn’t feel the waves coming toward him, one by one, threatening his life. He certainly felt them. He probably felt the panic of being in a life or death situation, too. But he did not allow his situation to overcome him with anger or agitation. Rather, he simply let each wave wash over him as it came, held on tight to whatever he could find, and slowly but surely made his way to shore. He worked with, rather than against, his circumstances, with the faith that doing so would eventually save him. 

Rabbi Akiva’s shipwreck exemplifies the kind of tests that life sends our way. The masters of Jewish ethical refinement see these moments not as scary threats or inconveniences, but as tests of our character. And it is precisely these tests that can throw us off our balance, or not, and in so doing reveal to ourselves what kinds of people we actually are. 

We find such a test in this morning’s Torah reading, the infamous binding of Isaac. Many of us have trouble relating to this story and the ways it seemingly valorizes child sacrifice, or at least the willingness to sacrifice one’s child for God. And we find ourselves shocked that the same man who boldly negotiated with God on behalf of cities full of wicked strangers can obediently take his beloved, long-awaited child to the top of the mountain and prepare to slaughter him as a sacrifice. 

The story begins unusually: “Some time afterward, God put Abraham to the test.” This is the only time in the Torah that God tests an individual this way. We, the readers, are told this is a test, possibly to pacify our horror at the prospect of child sacrifice. But Abraham and Isaac, of course, don’t know this is a test.

A test of what, exactly, we might ask. The only way I can make sense of this story is to foreground the previous promises to Abraham that Isaac would live on to inherit Abraham’s covenantal promise and legacy. Isaac’s unlikely birth offers proof that this promise has been and will continue to be fulfilled. 

So, when God suddenly instructs Abraham to take his beloved son and offer him up, Abraham has the covenantal promise in mind and knows that this cannot possibly be what God really wants. However, he trusts that God must be asking him to go down this path anyway for some good reason. So, Abraham goes forward. He even tips his hands when he tells the two servants that “we,” that is, himself and Isaac, will return to them after worshiping God on the mountain. Now, Abraham might be lying to cover up what he thinks is about to happen. But I’d prefer to think that Abraham knows that Isaac will somehow survive this ordeal, even if he does not know exactly what will happen.

And so Abraham continues until the last possible moment. The real test, then, comes when that angelic voice cries out while the knife is in the air: “Abraham, Abraham…Do not raise your hand against the boy.” Will Abraham listen to this new instruction, the instruction that accords with his previous communications from God about Isaac’s destiny and, presumably, with his own parental love and moral intuitions? Or, will he get stuck in those past instructions, unable to respond to what is happening now? 

Abraham, of course, listens to the new instructions and passes the test. Abraham takes each step as it comes, doing the next right thing, with the faith, grounded in God’s earlier promises, that somehow this will all work itself out, even if he cannot see how.  

Abraham models here for us the path of equanimity. When confronted with his task, he does not argue, or resist, or delay. He accepts what is happening right now and acts accordingly. And then again, with the second set of instructions, he accepts what is happening right now and acts accordingly. Nothing throws him off his balance or gets him so worked up that he can’t do anything. Like Rabbi Akiva, he takes each wave as it comes. Of course, Abraham could do this because he had the kind of direct access to personal Divine revelation that you and I do not. Even still, Abraham models what it means to calmly accept the task before us and to pursue it until we have reason not to. 

And, Abraham’s equanimity also points to the source of our own: faith. As Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg explains, equanimity comes from “turning to a power greater than ourselves…. I surrender my attachment to my separate and limited sense of self that must prove, solve, fix and find favor.”

Liberated from that self-orientation, we can create some space between what we are experiencing and our true selves. We can observe what is happening, externally and internally, as if it were happening to someone else. And then we can respond from a place of wisdom and intentionality, rather than letting our anger take the reins. 

A story is told about the saintly Hasidic master Rabbi Rafael of Bershad. Rabbi Rafael long sought to wear a garment made of cloth produced in the holy land. He finally obtained such cloth, and gave it to a tailor to turn into a garment he could wear. The tailor got right to work on the precious fabric. But at a certain point, he realized that he had cut not one, but two holes for the head. The tailor was mortified that he had ruined the precious cloth, and delayed returning it. Finally, with tears in his eyes, the tailor explained his mistake to Rabbi Rafael. The rabbi smiled at the tailor. “As a matter of fact, I did need two holes in this shirt: one for my head, and another to challenge me not to get angry.” 

If it is anything like the past year, and the one before that, this day-old new year will be full of situations that can arouse our anger. But if we develop our equanimity, if we bow our head to each wave as it comes, we can direct our anger, rather than letting our anger direct us. May we be privileged to achieve this in this new year. Shana tova.