On Anger - 7/28/2024

Hello everyone and thank you for coming to our weekly kaddish. Today marks the 295th day of Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestine. As the weeks go on, it becomes harder to fathom the extent of the destruction and death. It also becomes harder to fathom how we live in a world that allows and enables the ongoing genocide and mass land grab in Palestine to continue. As always, I am praying that this ends today. I pray that the hundreds of thousands of displaced people find a safe place to reside, that captives are released, the sick are returned to health, and all of those who have been martyred live on in the memories of those who knew and loved them. 

Sometimes I come here in grief, sometimes in sadness, sometimes in numbness. Today I come here in anger and disbelief. While I could not stomach watching the whole of Nitanyahu’s speech this week, I did watch clips of it as they came across my phone. Watching him get 58 standing ovations was sickening. Even more sickening were his statements about the great work of the Israeli military and how they had not killed civilians. He went on lauding the so-called morality of a group of people who have documented themselves killing civilians. He boldly and falsely claimed that the Israeli military got civilians out of harms’ way before military actions. 

Watching that clip, my jaw dropped, my pulse raced, my fists clenched and I yelled: what the fuck, how could anyone possibly believe this. Are people so daft? Is the media that they consume so one sided? Are they not watching the same videos that I am of Palestinians being told that they have minutes to evacuate and re-locate?

We seem to live in a post-truth world and it makes me feel angry and ungrounded so much of the time these days. I feel like I am constantly experiencing whiplash and having to question what is real. As I listened to clips of lie after lie, listening to a genocidal leader talk about the morality and justification of the past 295 days, I was thinking about Mohammed Bhar, the 24 year old Palestinian man with down syndrome who was killed by a military dog and left to die alone. I was thinking about the hundreds of thousands of people this week alone who were forced to flee Khan Younis minutes before it was bombarded. I am thinking about the videos of Palestinian captives being released looking like shells of their past selves. None of this is moral - so why is mainstream media silent about it and how do they let the lies fester and how am I supposed to act normally about this? 

In the Mishneh Torah, a book compiled between 1170 - 1180 CE and considered the Rambam’s, one of the greatest rabbi’s, greatest works, we read the following on human disposition:

There are temperaments with regard to which a man is forbidden to follow the middle path. He should move from one extreme to adopt another… Anger is also an exceptionally bad quality. It is fitting and proper that one move away from it and adopt the opposite extreme. He should school himself not to become angry even when it is fitting to be angry. If he should wish to arouse fear in his children and household - or within the community, if he is a communal leader and wishes to be angry at them them to motivate them to return to the proper path, he should present an angry front to them to punish them, but he should be inwardly calm. He should be like one who acts out the part of an angry man in his wrath, but is not himself angry.

The early Sages said: Anyone who becomes angry is like one who worships idols. They also saidL Whenever one becomes angry, if he is a wise man, his wisdom leaves him; if he is a prophet his prophecy leaves him. The life of the irate is not true life. Therefore, they have directed that one distance himself from anger and accustom himself not to feel any reaction, even to things which provoke anger. This is the good path.

The way of the righteous: They accept humiliation, but do not humiliate others; they listen when they are shamed, but they do not answer; they do this with love and are joyous in their sufferings. Of them, Judges 5:31 state: “And those who love God are like the sun when it comes out in strength.m”

I do not think that I have ever disagreed with the Rambam in such a profound way. Right now, we are living in a moment where the only thing that feels truthful is to be angry. I am with Rambam when he says that we should not arouse fear in children and parent from a place of anger. Being around my dad when his anger flared is something that still sits with me today. Fear of my parents did not make me a better person and I do not think that fear should ever be a parenting tool. 

I can also understand that the Rambam is thinking of hierarchy. He cautions leaders, and likely this means other rabbis, not to use fear as a way of convincing congregants or other such community members to act piously. I can buy this argument as well. I do not think that fear should be used to further entrench power and compliance.

However, I do think that there is a time and a place to channel anger and to act in anger. For those of us who see the injustice in our world today, from the police shooting of Sonya Massey, to rising rates of homelessness due to corporate greed, to the militarization of borders, to the ongoing genocide, we have the right to make our officials afraid. This is a subversion of hierarchy that feels just and holy. This is a just anger that comes from a proper understanding of the world and the intersecting fights for justice and liberation.

I do not think that my anger at the state of the world right now is anything like the worship of a false idol. Especially when you think about the fact that those who are not angry are worshiping gods like capitalism, militarism, facism and Zionism. 

Maybe this is wrong of me, but I want to make the ruling class scared. I want Nitanyanhu to be scared. I want Biden and Harris to be scared. I want them to understand that they should fear the anger of the masses who have the moral clarity to see them for who they are.  

But for now, my anger will be channeled into grief, into things that I can control and into action that has more of a local impact. My anger alone will not stop the world from being as evil as it is, but I do believe in the power of our anger as a collective.