Facing Our Anger

The English poet William Blake wrote a poem about the danger of allowing our anger to fester.  He called it “A Poison Tree”:

I was angry with my friend; 

I told my wrath, my wrath did end. 

I was angry with my foe: 

I told it not, my wrath did grow. 

And I waterd it in fears, 

Night & morning with my tears: 

And I sunned it with smiles, 

And with soft deceitful wiles. 

And it grew both day and night. 

Till it bore an apple bright. 

And my foe beheld it shine, 

And he knew that it was mine. 

And into my garden stole, 

When the night had veild the pole; 

In the morning glad I see; 

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

In simple, child-like language, William Blake identifies the emotional fuel that keeps our anger going.  Fears, tears, smiles, wiles.  Our fear of this or that fuels our anger; our desapir fuels it; as time goes on we are happy to maintain it, it is comforting to be angry; we tell all sorts of stories to ourselves and others in order to keep it going.  And it grows and grows.  Until it is downright deadly.

I don’t have to give you a list of all of the conflicts we endure – in our families, in our community, in our nation, between nations – you can come up with plenty of examples.

Since anger is universal and so destructive, I think it’s worth giving thought to what fuels it and if its destructive nature is inevitable. 

Anger plays a significant role in the story of Joseph and his brothers, a magnificent mini-narrative within the larger Genesis saga.

Joseph brothers are angry at his arrogance and at their father’s preferential treatment of him, which are related.

And it appears that Joseph harbors anger over having been thrown into a pit, first left for dead and then being sold into slavery.

I want to concentrate on Joseph’s anger and what he does with it.  Joseph is described as איש מצליח ish matzliah, a successful person – he will ultimately rise to second in command to the Pharaoh.  He has made great strides since his brothers sold him.

Yet all the time that he is in Egypt he thinks of his family.  Although the name he gives to his oldest son denotes that God has caused him to forget his family and his suffering, I can’t help but understand the name as wishful thinking or deliberately ironic.  It is clear that Joseph has forgotten neither his family nor his suffering and that he links the two.

And he is angry.  When his brothers come down to Egypt to ask for food, he turns the screws.  To be sure he is testing them to see if they have grown – if they will leave brother Benjamin behind the way that they left him behind.  But my sense is that what fuels his behavior is not just a desire to test them, but a desire to torment them, to take revenge.  I read the story and I can feel his delight – his smiles and his wiles, as William Blake said – in putting his brothers through the paces.

When brother Judah approaches Joseph and speaks of their father and his anguish, Joseph breaks down. We intuit that Joseph is turning a corner.  It seems that the pleasure and comfort of his anger are beginning to fray.  He is lonely.  He misses his brothers.  And ultimately his need for reconciliation overpowers his need for revenge.

He’s still a little cocky – he says, tell dad about כבודי במצרים k’vodi b’mitzrayim – the status I’ve achieved in Egypt.  

But the catharsis – the cries that all of Egypt heard – tell us that he has made a significant emotional breakthrough.  The paralysis, the sadness, the pettiness and the deception that fueled the anger have given way in Joseph to a desire to embrace and move forward,  a desire that Joseph’s brothers reciprocate.

This story is extraordinary – not just because it’s beautifully told, which it is – but because it is so unusual for people to confront their anger and to take the risks necessary to reexamine the way they relate to one another.  

Joseph does something which helps him and his brothers move past the paralyzing anger, something which we can learn from.

He retells his story.  I'm your brother Joseph, he says as he reveals himself to his brothers, whom you sold into Egypt.  Now don't reproach yourselves because you sold me because the ultimate outcome was that lives were saved.  God sent me ahead of you to ensure your survival. 

Later, after father Jacob dies, the brothers fear that Joseph will retaliate and Joseph says, Relax.  I'm not God.  And even though you intended me harm, it was part of God's plan to ensure your survival and the survival of the Egyptian people.

In the retelling of the story – in viewing what happened as part of a larger picture where Joseph is able, through God's generosity, to bring benefit to people near and far, Joseph shifts his understanding of himself from helpless victim to responsible leader, from passive recipient of his brother's resentment to active shaper of his destiny and the destiny of others.  Moreover, his leadership is not just about his own grandeur as it might have been when he was younger.  It is about his capacity to bring מחיה mihya, sustenance, life, to the world.

Joseph is motivated to retell his story in part because he sees growth in his brothers and in part because the pain that his anger causes him finally outweighs the comfort.

Anger is exhausting and debilitating but it can be quite comforting.  It is comforting to nurse our wounds.   We gain some pleasure, even if it's a perverse pleasure, from reminding ourselves and one another about how others have done us wrong.  It's comforting to stay with a story that imposes much responsibility on the other person and little or no responsibility on us.

We turn a corner when the pain and loneliness that our anger causes us become so great that we are willing to leave the comfort of our victimhood and self-righteousness behind and to tell a different story.  

A story which requires us to take some responsibility for ourselves and ultimately allows us to have a positive impact on others.

I ask us to look at our own lives, to reflect a bit on our own anger toward others.  The anger may be justified.  We may truly have been done wrong.  We may have every right in the world to be angry.

But we should each ask ourselves, am I paying too high a price for my anger?  Is the comfort of feeling right outweighed by the paralysis it brings?

To be sure there are situations that cannot be reconciled, people with whom we cannot reconcile.  

But I suspect that those situations and those people are few and far between.

Imagine if we, like Joseph – fully human, fully flawed – could use a new lens, could take a fresh look, could tell a different story – that allowed us to redefine our relationship with those who have wronged us and to move from paralysis to purpose and resolve.

And just for a moment, though I will turn our attention to it more deeply in the future, I ask us to imagine what might happen if communities and nations that are gripped by paralyzing anger and resentment could pursue some iteration of Joseph's example – each group defining itself confidently, looking at past grievances more as agents than as victims, telling a story that is rooted more in confidence than resentment, a story that can bring sustenance rather than bitterness and worse.

As our anger recedes, we, like Joseph, will find the capacity to re-seed.  Instead of Poison Trees we can dot the landscape with atzei hayim – trees of life, with the faith that God has sent us here, as God sent Joseph to Egypt, in order to bring life.  

Originally shared at Temple Israel of Great Neck on January 7, 2017