Showing posts with label Anger management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anger management. Show all posts

Tuesday, 26 December 2023

If you must be angry, do it properly

To ram home the message that we should all be meek and gentle rather than tetchy and irritable, many people like to quote from the Gemara (Shabbat 30b) :

תָּנוּ רַבָּנַן: לְעוֹלָם יְהֵא אָדָם עַנְוְותָן כְּהִלֵּל וְאַל יְהֵא קַפְּדָן כְּשַׁמַּאי

Our Rabbis taught: A man should always be an anvetan like Hillel, and not a kapdan like Shammai.

Anvetan is usually rendered “gentle”, “humble”, “forbearing” or “patient”, while kapdan is usually rendered “hot-tempered”, “angry”, “irritable” or “Impatient”.  From this it is assumed that Hillel was all sweetness and light while Shammai was a bit of a grumpus. As if to fortify this impression, the Gemara goes on to give three case histories involving applicants for conversion to Judaism. Each receives short shrift from Shammai but is then welcomed by Hillel.

Can these characterisations be accurate? After all, it is from Shammai that we learn (Avot 1:15) to greet everyone with a happy, smiling face. These don’t read like the words of a man with an antisocial bent.

According to Rav Kook (cited by R’ Chaim Druckman, Avot leBanim) this traditional understanding of the Gemara is wrong. So how should we learn it?

We should start from the premise that both Hillel and Shammai have important lessons to impart to us. Hillel demonstrates to us the correct way to be an anvetan, and there are many stories in which we see examples of this quality. Shammai, who like Hillel is an individual with outstanding personal qualities, shows us the correct way to be a kapdan. From our literature we learn of the circumstances in which, acting as a kapdan, he either defends the honour of the Torah or tests the resolve of an applicant for conversion. He certainly doesn’t blow his top for the sake of personal gratification or in consequence of any loss of self-control.

What then is the Gemara teaching? If you are to act the anvetan, follow the example of Hillel. If you are to act as a kapdan, follow the example of Shammai. And if you have a choice—as we all do in our relations with our fellow humans—to be either an anvetan or a kapdan, we should choose to be the former.

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Wednesday, 20 December 2023

Managing other people's anger

What does Pirkei Avot have to say about anger management? Anger is a normal human reaction and we are all humans so, while anger is not prohibited, we are praised for being slow to anger and swift to calm down again (Avot 5:14). It’s also a good idea not to engage as a teacher anyone who gets angry with students or pupils (Avot 2:6).  A further teaching, at Avot 4:23, has recently found its way into a Times of Israel blogpost on account of its topicality. There, among other things, R’ Shimon ben Elazar tells us:

אַל תְּרַצֶּה אֶת חֲבֵרֶֽךָ בְּשַֽׁעַת כַּעֲסוֹ

“Do not appease your friend at the height of his anger”.

In her article, “Liz’s Legacy”, Ariella Cohen comments on the recent debacle when the heads of three of the most prestigious universities in the United States—Harvard, MIT and Penn—testified at a Congressional hearing to the effect that a context-appropriate call for genocide against the Jews would be tolerated on their campuses. Penn head Liz Magill subsequently sought to apologise for her statement and later resigned. In the course of her blogpost Cohen comments:

After the Congressional hearing, I was more upset by Liz Magill’s attempted apology than by her original remarks. Some things cannot be apologized for. Especially not while the wound is raw. You cannot emotionally rip somebody (or group of people) apart and then tell them the next day that you didn’t actually mean it. Or rather you can, but it’s completely unacceptable. We know from Pirkei Avot 4:23 that Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar teaches: “Do not appease your friend in the time of his anger…” I don’t think Liz regularly reads through Pirkei Avot, so she is probably not familiar with this teaching. But it is an extremely smart and poignant one which she violated. Trying to calm someone (or in this case, Jews all over the world) immediately after severely affronting them on a national level is ill-advised.

Avot Today has already commented on the concept of context and is not revisiting the issue here. The question now before us is whether Cohen is right to apply this mishnah from Avot. While I am in agreement with the general content and thrust of her article, I would respectfully question whether she is taking R’ Shimon ben Elazar’s teaching further than it actually goes.

First, let us consider who is being appeased. The mishnah as it stands does not differentiate between appeasing a friend (i.e. anyone at all) you have angered and someone who has been angered by something from outside your relationship with your friend. The Me’am Lo’ez assumes that it refers to placating a person you have personally angered, while the Sforno’s commentary appears to imply the opposite and the Ru’ach HaChaim makes it refer to appeasing God. In all cases, however, the mishnah presupposes some sort of direct and immediate relationship between the would-be appeaser and the one who is angry. Having the angry person in sight, in the words of R’ Yitzchak Greenberg (Sage Advice), enables the would-be appeaser to gauge whether the latter has used up all his anger before seeking to calm him down; it is only then that he will likely be amenable to reason and/or to any soothing speech. This is clearly not the case when the cause of the anger is a public statement that goes viral and angers many millions of people, spread over five continents, who are almost entirely unknown to the speaker and unreachable in terms of human contact.

Secondly we should ask whether, in the case of a public statement of this nature, one should delay at all before issuing an apology or retraction. The feelings of 16 million Jews are only one factor to be considered. Failure to implement an immediate damage limitation exercise runs the risk that others will publicly approve the offensive words and cite them as a respectable authority for the extermination of the world’s Jewish population. Others again may feel emboldened to commit acts of violence against Jews and vandalism against their property. If there is even the smallest risk of such an outcome, no time should be lost in waiting for the world’s Jews to stop being angry.

The last word goes to Rambam. In his commentary on Avot he says simply that a person should not make statements except in a situation where they will have an effect. This is ultimately a judgement call that each individual must make for himself. In my view, Liz Magill was wrong to say what she did, but right to apologise sooner rather than later. What a shame it is that her words of apology did not sound more convincing.

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