Rebbetzin Leah Gans
Having discussed punishments, we should revisit parental anger. It is important to do so before moving on to the second part of our parenting methods: “the right hand draws close.”
What kind of emotion is anger? Is it legitimate? Does “righteous anger” exist? What does an angry person build, and what does he destroy, in the home and in raising children?
Kohelet (10:1) says: “A dead fly makes perfumed oil stink and ferment; a little foolishness outweighs wisdom and honor”.
Imagine a large container of expensive oil, shemen rokeach (cosmetic oil), with a very pleasant fragrance. Then a tiny carrion fly gets into it and dies. The foulness of decay that the tiny fly introduces into the fine oil is enough to make it ferment and spoil completely, beginning to bubble and give off a disgusting stench. It seems illogical: why should a large container of oil be spoiled by one tiny fly?
The Talmud (Berakhot 61a) says that this fly is the evil inclination, which lives between the two halves of the heart. Why a fly? Apparently because this living creature keeps tormenting a person, no matter how often it is shooed away.
We may well encounter a person full of wonderful character traits, fragrant with good deeds like perfumed oil. He has a remarkably sharp mind and a kind heart. But if he has no control over his negative traits, all this wonderful “oil” will spoil. He may lose everything he has: his home, family, love, and children. He will ruin it all with his own hands!
Tractate Sotah (3b) says: “Anger in the home is like a worm in a sesame seed”; it destroys the home. It goes on to say that this applies more to women (since women spend more time at home and are identified with the home, but when it comes to raising children, a father’s anger can also do great harm). A worm in sesame is comparable in size to a sesame seed—so small, yet the damage it causes is enormous.
Why Anger?
Why do we speak of anger as a destructive force? Why do we not discuss other negative emotions: hurt, guilt, anxiety, bitterness?
It is human nature to experience the full range of emotions, but anger is sometimes the hardest to restrain. We are not talking about an unattainable goal: never feeling anger at all. We are talking about someone who has become addicted to anger; it has become part of his life (he has developed an “adrenaline addiction” to it).
Our Sages say in tractate Shabbat (105b): “One who tears his clothes in anger, breaks dishes in anger, or scatters his possessions in anger—regard him as one who worships idols. For this is the specialty of the yetzer hara, the evil inclination: today it tells him, ‘Do this,’ tomorrow, ‘Do that,’ until it tells him, ‘Go and worship idols,’ and he will go and worship.”
Our Sages did not say that everyone who breaks dishes is an idolater, but only someone who does so in anger. Anger feels pleasant to a person; it gives him a sense of power and excitement (the effect of adrenaline), and since the dose must increase each time, he gradually destroys more and more around him. The voice of the evil inclination grows louder, and the voice of the soul grows quieter, until the evil inclination tells him to do something utterly outrageous—to go and worship idols—and he will go, to experience that familiar euphoria once again.
The Soul Must Rule the Body
Our Sages say in tractate Berakhot (61b): “The righteous are governed by their good inclination, as it says (Psalms, 109:22): ‘My heart is broken within me’; the wicked are governed by their evil inclination (ibid., 36:2): ‘In my heart (I sense) a sinful word addressed to the wicked—there is no fear of G-d before his eyes’; and those in between are governed by both, as it says (ibid., 109:31): ‘He stands at the right of the poor man, to save him from those (the two inclinations) that govern his soul’”.
Those in between must work on themselves to rein in their evil inclination.
The Departments of Hell
There is a well-known saying of the Sages (Nedarim, 22a): “When someone becomes angry, it is as though all forms of Gehinnom have power over him”.
We can imagine Gehinnom having different departments: for theft, for murder, for sexual immorality… And a person in anger is as though under the power of all these departments at once.
What Remains When the Neshama Departs?
Our Sages warn against angry people. There is a verse in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (2:22): “Do not rely on a man whose breath is in his nostrils, for what is he worth?”. [In Hebrew: חִדְלוּ לָכֶם מִן הָאָדָם אֲשֶׁר נְשָׁמָה בְּאַפּוֹ כִּי בַמֶּה נֶחְשָׁב הוּא. It can be translated as “Enough—keep away from a man whose soul (departs) in anger…”]
The Zohar (Rabbi Yehudah, the portion of Tetzaveh) says the following about this verse: “The trait of reckless anger: ‘Here, the Almighty commands a person and warns him to avoid people who defile their souls. When G-d created man, He made him in His image and breathed a holy soul into him... And a person is known by his anger: if he preserves his holy soul even when anger overtakes him, and does not uproot it from its place… he is a kosher person… But if he does not preserve it, uproots this lofty holiness from its place, and allows the “other side” (sitra achra, the forces of evil) to dwell within him, this person rebels against his Master, and one must not become close to him or maintain a friendship with him. He persecutes this holy soul and defiles it with his anger. He replaces his soul with anger…’”
And, as it is written in the Book of Job (18:4): “One who tears his soul apart in his anger!..”
This refers to a person who loses self-control in anger and allows anger to rule him and direct his actions.
Anger becomes his master, whereas a person should actually be doing the will of the Almighty. That is why our Sages say that someone who becomes angry “sets up a foreign god for himself.”
What does it mean when the soul—the neshama—departs? It means that only the nefesh, the animal soul, remains. In other words, a person becomes like an animal, behaves like an animal, losing the tzelem Elokim, the image of G-d.
to be continuedPrepared by Mrs. Zissi Skarzhinskaya