Question 12: What is Our Anger Doing for Us?

(Hi folks— so it took months, but I finally did it. And by “it” I mean move my publication from Substack to a non-Nazi-profiting platform. The free version of beehiiv doesn’t have the bells and whistles of Substack, but it also has less moral ambiguity, so I’ll take it as a win and hope that you’ll forgive any cosmetic issues)

I’m afraid that we’re getting angrier.

There are a lot of good reasons to be angry. I’m not saying otherwise. But I’m afraid that our anger is getting in the way.

In the last week, I’ve been in conversation (literal and virtual) with people who are enraged. Enraged by the new video of young Israeli women being threatened by Hamas militants with rape. Enraged by footage of yet another attack by settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank. Enraged by a war that seems no closer to ending now than it did 3 months ago. Enraged by an incursion into Rafah that’s displacing the already severely displaced. Enraged by an arrest warrant for Binyamin Netanyahu. Enraged that Bibi hasn’t already been arrested. Enraged by campus protestors engaging in antisemitics tropes. Enraged by campus protestors getting brutalized by the police. Enraged by the very existence of Jews who don’t support Israel. Enraged by the very existence of Jews who do.

Our anger is sweeping over our grief, crashing over the knowledge deep within ourselves that there is, always, humanity to be found in the other. Our anger is keeping us from making space for horror. Instead of grieving the dead, we are directing our emotions to rage against those who are grieving the “wrong” people. Our anger is eating us alive. Our anger is keeping us from talking. Our anger is flattening our fellow humans into something 2-dimensional, where a single word or phrase — a word or phrase with a multitude of meanings— can rock a person instantly from potential ally to adversary.

There is so much reason to be angry. But it cannot be like this. We do not grow like this. We do not learn like this. And we do not serve the Jewish people, or any people, like this.

In the first post I wrote after October 7th, Hatred or Grief?, I reminded us:

“Hate is a powerful force but in time all it leads to is isolation and pain. Grief can be equally powerful and in time it can lead to communal care.”

Since October, many of us have chosen hate and are continuing to choose hate every day. Too many of us are choosing to pick a “side” and turn to outrage whenever someone dares to advocate for the “other side.” Too many of us are willing to set aside the humanity of Palestinian civilians, or Israeli civilians, because it’s inconvenient to care about people who are in the way of our “cause” even when multiple causes are intertwined.

Too many of us are unwilling to have the tough conversations that put a human face on every “side” of this conflict and muddy the waters of it, but that is what we simply must do. We must leave our silos and we must engage with people who believe differently, and we must be open to being changed.

To be willing to be in conversation does not mean setting aside or ignoring power dynamics or the role of historic and current oppression(s). It does not mean opening yourself to abusive speech (if that happens, the conversation needs to end). And it does not, necessarily, mean having your mind changed. But it means you might change. It means you might leave the conversation with more questions than you had going into it, that the questions might gnaw at you, that you might seek out additional conversations or learning, and that— yes— you might not be the same person with the same beliefs afterwards.

I think that’s a reason so many of us are so afraid to talk. If we think that Israelis are completely in the right but hear the story of an American-Palestinian who watched his rights be stripped away as he immigrated from Ohio to Ramallah, it can rock our foundations. If we think that all Israelis are settler-colonialists but engage in conversation with a Mizrahi Jew whose great grandmother was forced to leave her country and came to Israel because there was nowhere else to go, it can rock our foundations. If we hear an Israeli talk about how the word “intifada” conjures for them bus bombings and the death of their sibling, if we hear a Palestinian talk about how “from the river to the sea” is a call for justice for all people in the land, it can rock our foundations. It’s terrifying, and? Right now, our foundations need to be rocked.

Some of the best conversations I’ve had about Israel and Palestine were as a rabbinical student. (To be fair, it’s hard to avoid conversations about Israel when you’re a rabbinical student, or a rabbi) At the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, I was in classes with people who loved Israel deeply and with people who were intensely critical of Israel. Sometimes, conversations were difficult, but I learned more from talking to my classmates and teachers than I ever could have from study alone. I remember an evening in Jerusalem with two classmates debating what “Zionist” even meant over whiskey, long before the current uproar. I remember standing in the kitchen of the college as a classmate expressed her ardent support for Palestine and got into a serious conversation with another student. I remember asking difficult questions and having difficult questions asked of me. I remember my foundations getting rocked, and I’m a better rabbi today because of it.

I believe now what I believed on October 8th: sometimes, we need our anger to pull us through difficulty. Anger can help when we don’t feel that we have the strength to keep going. But now? Now, for most of us, anger is burning us up instead of fueling us. We are using our anger to shield ourselves from the complicated, messy work that we must do to get through this, and we are doing no one– including ourselves— any favors.

Shabbat is coming. I hope you’ll take Shabbat as an opportunity to consider the stories you’re afraid to hear, and that you’ll be ready— if not tomorrow then soon— to listen anyway.

Shema Yisrael. Listen, Divine Wrestlers. Listen.