I still watch cable news, and too often, it makes me angry. I recognize anger as perhaps the least healthy of emotions. Yet I reframe and justify my anger as holy, righteous indignation at injustice, cruelty, and corruption.
That impulse has scriptural cover. As Deuteronomy opens, Moses reminds the people of God’s anger: first directed at the Israelites for their faithlessness, then turned toward Moses himself, whom God punishes for the people’s disobedience.
If God gets angry, surely we’re entitled to as well? The wisdom traditions, Jewish and Stoic alike, say otherwise.
Psalm 37 warns, “Refrain from anger and forsake wrath; do not fret, for it leads only to evil.” Pirkei Avot counsels, “Do not be easily provoked to anger” (2:10). And Ecclesiastes goes further still: “Do not be quick to anger, for anger rests in the bosom of fools” (7:9).
Which leaves a theological problem: how can God display what appears to be a bad emotion? The Talmud constrains the matter and shrinks God’s anger down to almost nothing, a flash, tightly contained: “God becomes angry every day, but His anger lasts only a moment” (Berachot 7a). Anger, in other words, is not God’s nature. It is a brief and reluctant departure from it.
Maimonides makes room for anger only as a teaching tool, the way a parent might raise their voice to correct a misbehaving child. Maimonides draws a hard line between expressing anger and harboring it (Hilchot De’ot 2:3). You may demonstrate anger. You may not feel it.
Later Hasidic masters push the reframe further, suggesting that God’s anger exists only as a mirror for God’s compassion, the shadow that makes the light visible. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev asked, in effect, what pain lies beneath God’s disappointment. Our task is to stay faithful, and anger dissolves.
Outside the Jewish sources, the Stoics arrive at nearly the same place. Seneca called anger a temporary madness. The Talmud expresses a similar sentiment: “One who becomes angry is as though he worships idols” (Shabbat 105b).
Epictetus went further, locating the true source of anger not in events but in our judgments about them: “People are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of them.” Perhaps the news doesn’t make me angry. My interpretation of the news does.
Can anger, at least, be excused as fuel? I understood anger as the thing that gets me off the couch and into the fight. Here too, Stoic and rabbinic voices agree. The angry person believes he is seizing control; in truth, he has surrendered control to whatever provoked him.
So where does that leave my “holy” indignation? Being angry drains me, and it rarely moves anyone toward anything but more complaining.
What both traditions ask for instead is harder and quieter: care that doesn’t need a villain to sustain it, action that doesn’t require outrage. The next time the news anchors raise the alarm, and I feel my blood pressure rising to match it, I want to reach for something other than anger. Injustice still deserves a response. But the best response is never anger. It is compassion that motivates the important work anger can only pretend to do.
Rabbi Evan J. Krame
If this reflection resonates with you, consider sharing it on social media—or simply take a moment to reflect on how you can create a better community.
