As many of you know, this is a difficult time for our community. I don’t want to ignore this, but I want us to remember that today is a simcha. Besides being Shabbat, this is Daphne’s Bat Mitzvah and a day of joy and celebration for her and her family.
But it’s interesting that at this time in our community when we’re all feeling our emotions very strongly, we have this reading today that deals with the intensity of emotions and its consequences. In the haftarah Daphne just read, King David is having the holy Ark brought to Jerusalem as part of the process of national centralization. The Ark is loaded onto an ox cart and transported, accompanied by music and dancing. At one point, the oxen stumble, and one of the men guiding the cart, Uzza, reaches out to support the Ark and keep it from falling. It seems to be a reasonable thing to do, but God is furious. Vayichar Af Adonai: God is incensed. And without a moment’s hesitation, God strikes Uzza down, killing him on the spot, leaving King David and us, the reader, a bit stunned at the severity of God’s anger.
This story is linked to this Torah portion, Shemini, because in it, God also strikes down people, suddenly and inexplicably. During the inauguration of worship at the Mishkan, two priests, Nadav and Avihu, two of Aaron’s sons, are killed instantly when they offer strange fire, which is apparently some kind of incense offering that had not been commanded. God’s anger and the deaths that are the result of God’s anger leave us perplexed. Commentators come up with dozens of varied and somewhat farfetched explanations for the deaths of both Uzza and Nadav and Avihu because they need to find an explanation for God’s seemingly irrational behavior and extremely short fuse.
But perhaps the Torah is really just teaching us something here about the reality of anger and its effects. Think about it: throughout the Torah we see instances of God and people getting angry and the often impulsive and destructive behaviors that come from being angry:
- Moses comes down from Mount Sinai and gets angry when he sees that the Israelites have built a golden calf. What does he do? He smashes the tablets of the 10 Commandments that he’s just received from God, written with God’s finger, he just destroys them! If that weren’t enough, Moses rallies people up to battle and 3000 people end up getting killed.
- Moses’ rage gets him into even bigger trouble in the book of Numbers when, in his anger and frustration, he strikes the rock, twice with his staff, the rock that he was supposed to speak to so that it would provide water for the people. Because of this outburst of anger, Moses is punished with not being able to enter the Promised land.
- There are many examples, but it seems that from the very beginning of time, people have been getting angry and behaving destructively as a result. Cain gets angry that his offering isn’t as accepted as his brother Abel’s, and so he kills him. His anger gets the best of him, even though God warns him: “Sin couches at the door, but you can be its master.” (Gen 4:7)
But how can we be its master? How do we prevent anger from being so destructive? After all, isn’t there good reason to be angry sometimes? Aren’t we justified in our indignation? Hey, even God gets angry. Yes, God does get angry in the Torah, as do people, as we’ve seen. But we’ve also seen how anger leads to destructive behaviors and people getting hurt: broken tablets, not getting into the Promised Land, people getting killed.
The rabbis knew this and taught us to be very careful with our anger and its consequences. In the Talmud they say “Anger causes wisdom to depart from the wise and prophecy to depart from the prophet.” They also say: “When a person gives way to rage, even the Divine Presence abandons him.” When we’re angry, we lose our clarity, we lose the best of ourselves.
But if we are angry, and especially if we feel we have reason to be angry, what do we do so that our anger doesn’t become destructive, so that we’re not losing ourselves and zapping people and breaking things, like in the Torah?
Well, let’s look at what’s going on in the Torah. In every case where God or a person gets angry, they get angry because something sacred to them was violated, something of precious value to them was disrespected or disregarded.
- In today’s readings, God’s instructions about what was to be treated as holy in a very specific way – that the Ark was not to be touched or that offerings were supposed to be made a certain way - were ignored. And God gets angry."
- In the case of the golden calf, Moses had just experienced the Presence of God! And it hurt him to see the Israelites disregard the preciousness of his experience. So Moses gets angry.
- When Moses strikes the rock, first of all, he’s grieving. He’s just lost his sister, Miriam; her death is the reason why the people need water in the first place. But also, something of great value to him – the faith that God will bring them through the desert and into the Promised land – is violated, and that violation makes him angry.
- And Cain – his offering is rejected by God. How hurtful – to make an offering and have it be rejected. So he gets angry.
You get the idea. In every case that someone is angry, it’s because something that’s so precious and so valuable to a person is trampled on or threatened.
So, what if instead of reacting in hurtful or destructive ways, we looked at: what are those sacred values that are underneath the anger?
I’ll give you an example: Say I’m angry at you because I feel you’re not listening to me. Well, under my anger and my desire to yell at you is that I value being heard, and that people should listen well to each other and respect each other. So, what if I acted from that value of listening, respect, and communication rather than yelling at you?
Or what if I’m really angry and outraged that someone’s cell phone went off during Shabbat services? Well, what value of mine was violated? I value a holy space of peace and prayer and community where our traditions are respected. So rather than berating someone in my anger, I could ask myself: how might I respond in a way that embodies the values of creating a holy space of peace and prayer and community and respect?
What if we were able to get out of what one of my teachers calls the “emotional spin cycle” of anger and fear that contracts us, and what if we were able to act from the place of those values that are lying there underneath the anger – values like: love of Torah and mitzvot, importance of community, sacredness of holy times and places, value of relationships?
What if we were able to separate the fuse from the flame and instead of just being angry and blowing up in “strange fire,” we could shine a light on what’s underneath the anger, and then acted from that, from that precious and holy value that we want so much to protect? Whether it’s love, respect, friendship, community, whatever that value is that feels threatened in the first place.
My blessing for us is that: just like anger has a message and a teaching in the Torah, that we can look underneath what makes us angry, and rather than let anger be destructive and hurt us and others and our community, we can pause and take a careful look and let our anger teach us what it is we truly value and act from that place as our best and holiest selves.
Shabbat Shalom.
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