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Tending To Our Anger In An Age Of Rage

10/06/2025 06:04:48 AM

Oct6

Rabbi Julia Berg

Yom Kippur 5876 | 2025

Something I think we can all agree on is that our world has grown more and more polarized in recent years. We see it play out on the public stage between politicians, in schools among teachers, students, parents and administrators, and in the online and in-person discourse about every hot topic under the sun. But I am noticing that we are also seeing fervid anger in the everyday interactions between people, political or not. Now more than ever, people are so ready to grab their phones to record a heated conversation, scream at each other over minor inconveniences, and angrily attack each other in social media comment sections. We have become primed for other people’s anger. And perhaps we ourselves are harboring anger whether or not we act on it. While walking in my own neighborhood recently, I noticed something seemingly insignificant, but also very telling of this moment. There is a house by the local school that has cones in front of the driveway with signs on them, ostensibly harmless and a helpful reminder to know the boundaries of parking during pick up and drop off times. But the signs read: YOU HAVE NO MORALS. YOU ARE SPINELESS COWARDS. We have tried to do this the nice way, speaking to the principal. Here is a list of the offenses made against us. Here is how you have tormented us. 

These signs are so angry. The people who live there were clearly disturbed by the lack of respect others had for their private space. And I can only imagine the nastiness of in person interactions that took place between these homeowners and the people who blocked their driveway for a note like this to be written. The words were practically leaping off the page, screaming. If I put myself in their shoes, I imagine I, too, would be angry at the circumstances. 

But I also notice something else hiding behind that anger, perhaps a little afraid to peer out. I see hurt. They were people who were feeling misunderstood or unheard, and no one was listening so they screamed it out on the page. There are so many inequities in the world, so many that are greater than this one, but I think in its pedestrian nature and in its seeming normalcy, it feels like a sign of the times in which we are living. I could not even say I was surprised given how people interact with each other in 2025.

I, too, can recall moments of fervent anger in recent years about the way the world is going. One summer while struggling with this anger and what to do with it, I was lucky enough to receive a gift in the form of a book from a dear colleague and friend called Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger by a Buddhist teacher Lama Rod Owens. This book has helped me to see how anger can cover up a deeper hurt and that we have the ability to metabolize it into something of use for ourselves even though it might not be the easy path. He explains that “the work to turn our attention back to the woundedness is this really intense, profound path of transformation, which doesn’t feel as good as just responding to the anger, because the energy of anger makes us feel powerful. Some of us, particularly if we’re coming from positions and communities where we feel marginalized or erased, use that anger to feel powerful, to feel valid.” 

And when he put it that way, it made so much sense. At a moment when we feel powerless because someone has trespassed our boundaries, disrespected our identities, or ridiculed our beliefs, we might want to feel powerful in a way that projecting anger has a way of doing.

Instead of projecting that anger though, we could wonder about something in ourselves and others. As we turn inward this Yom Kippur to reflect on who we have been this past year, we might ask ourselves: What is that thing that feels so attacked? What in us feels so hurt that we must cry out in anger? Only then might we begin to understand and use that anger as something other than a cover up.

I am reminded of a story from our Talmudic tradition that explains how anger in the face of something as mundane as a party invitation became a source of detriment to our entire people. You see, there was a wealthy man who was having a party and wanted to invite his friend, Kamtza. Instead the invitation went to Bar Kamtza, which was a mistake anyone could make. The only problem was that Bar Kamtza was the host’s rival, not his friend at all. 

When the day of the party arrived, the host, who did not know about this mistake, could not believe the audacity of Bar Kamtza to show up at his event. He marched over and said, “what are YOU doing here? Get out!” 

Bar Kamtza said: “Oh please, since I am already here, let me stay, and I will pay you for whatever I eat and drink.”

The host spit back: “Absolutely not.”

“Then let me give you half the cost of the party.”

The host refused.

“Then let me pay for the whole party.”

Still the host refused, and took him by the hand and threw him out.

Bar Kamtza sat there on the ground, cheeks flushed and flooded with embarrassment, and thought to himself, “the Rabbis, the sages of our community, were just sitting there and did not stop him. They must have agreed with the host that this was okay behavior. I’ll show them…I will go and inform against them to the Roman government.” What followed was a series of events that would lead to the Roman military attacking and eventually destroying the 2nd Temple. It is an incredible turn of events that all stemmed from a simple clerical error. Talmud tells us it is because of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza that the Temple was destroyed. But it’s not quite so simple. A deeper reading of the story shows us that the pervasive culture of anger, outbursts, and revenge is what caused the Temple to be destroyed. The unnamed host of this party has no regard for the embarrassment he might cause to this person in his midst who is asking for a morsel of human dignity in front of his peers. Bar Kamtza, in his fit of rage, escalates matters to a level higher than we might think this little party could go. And the rabbis who sit there at the party without saying a word, in a way, condone this treatment of people, perhaps because it feels so normal in their society to act this way. 

I worry today’s world and the world of Talmud, millenia apart, look far too similar. Too many of us are screaming out in fits of rage as a way to deal with anger rather than identify and address the hurt that exists beneath it all. Lama Owens continued in his book, “If you want to be angry, that’s wonderful; but if you’re actually concerned with nonviolence you also have an ethical responsibility to have a relationship with your hurt. I can be hurt and angry at the same time, and I can love both my anger and my hurt.”1

Similarly, but with his own twist, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel thought of anger as being closely tied to love. He reminds us in his book The Prophets that we see these powerful emotions of love and anger not only in humans but also in God. Heschel saw anger as an offering of love. He reminds us, the God that loves humanity and wants us to love the right thing is the same God who is going to be angry when we do not do those things. Now, the God of Torah often acts in impassioned ways, ways that beget violence. And yet today on Yom Kippur, we are reminded of God’s 13 attributes, which rather significantly includes God’s slowness to anger and God’s willingness to forgive when teshuva has been done. We have the capacity to hold both our anger and our love as well. 

When we are angry, it is because we care so deeply about something whether that thing is our own safety or the well-being of others. Anger serves as a messenger of something bigger happening under the surface. But it is something that must be regulated, rather than released in every direction if we want it to be sustainable. I hope I do not need to tell you how unsustainable it is for people to be screaming at each other at every turn. When we sit with anger, breathe it in, and then out, and wonder about it, we begin to disarm it. We acknowledge the brokenness and the hurt that lies underneath and we begin to understand which part of ourselves or which part of our understanding of the world has been trespassed upon. It is only then that we can begin to redirect that hurt toward caring for the broken part. Lama Owens implores us to treat our anger as something “precious and beautiful.” It is in fact a tool for justice, a catalyst for justice but only if we use it with clarity.

While studying as an undergraduate student, I found myself surrounded by what felt like a million options for how to spend my time outside of the classroom and I was unsure where to turn. But I had a helpful question in mind that fueled my decision making: what is making me angry these days? 

I realized how angry I was at the fact that my friends and I did not feel safe walking home alone at night. I was angry that it was common amongst my peers to feel afraid to be alone at a party for fear of being sexually harassed. I was angry that too many people I knew were finding themselves unable to intervene as bystanders in uncomfortable social situations.

Through that answer, it became clear that the place I should spend my time and energy was at the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center on my campus, where I would volunteer and work for the next three years. And while this did not subdue my anger as it pertains to the injustices in the world and on my campus surrounding sexual violence, it gave me purpose every single day, it gave me language to name the hurt I was feeling underneath that anger, and it gave me a place to put all of the love I felt for my friends, peers, and even strangers who I knew deserved better from their college experience.

I wonder if, in this new year, as we strive to be our best selves, better able to understand our own anger, we can ask ourselves what makes us so angry in this world. Where does our hurt lie? What do we love so much that when it is violated, we erupt in pain? When we begin to answer those questions, I hope we can find places to channel the very anger that has consumed us so that we may take back some of its control.

On this Yom Kippur day and in the new year ahead, I hope that we will have the clarity to recognize the anger that lives within us, have enough respect for that anger to treat it with curiosity and care, and transform that anger into a catalyst for action to begin to repair our own hurt. May this be our vision for a more sustainable way of living and a healthier world. May our anger fuel our vision for a better future and not be our detriment today. May we have enough compassion for our anger that it may serve us and not rule over us. G’mar Chatima Tovah.


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1  Owens, Lama Rod, Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger. North Atlantic Books, 2021.

Tue, October 14 2025 22 Tishrei 5786