We continue with the fundamental that Ahavat Yisrael/ loving your fellow Jew will protect a person from anger. The Midrash Shemuel elaborates on this and makes two points.
His first point is that, “It never happens that someone is angry, unless the person is lenient in the respect of his friend.
And then he feels anger against him and will curse to scream at him.”
He’s teaching us a principle- You don’t get angry at someone that you respect.
If a great rabbi or Adam Gadol/ great man, was walking by and accidentally spilled his coffee on your shirt, you wouldn’t scream at him. He’s a great man. Out of your respect for him, you would not get angry at him.
Likewise, what would you do if a great man was pulling out of the parking lot and dented your car? For an extreme example, imagine if it was Chacham Ovadia Yosef’s driver! If you saw Chacham Yosef sitting in the car, you would not start screaming and yelling- not with an Adam Gadol there.
The Midrash Shemuel says that if we were to respect our fellow man like we respect ourselves (as it says in Pirkei Avot, which we quoted in our last lesson- יְהִי כְבוֹד חֲבֵרְךָ חָבִיב עָלֶיךָ כְּשֶׁלָּךְ Your friend’s honor should be dear to you like your own), then the outcome would be that we wouldn’t get angry, because anger only comes from a lack of respect.
This is a tremendous principle. So therefore, rather than work on not getting angry (which is a hard thing to do), we should work on respecting people.
You can’t get angry at someone that you have a great level of respect for.
That is how we can use Ahavat Yisrael to get into the gut of a person, so to say.
So rather than waiting until we get to the point of anger, we can pull the carpet out from under it- because you can’t get angry at someone whom you respect. You get angry at people only because they are on a lower level of respect than you.
This is our first approach to how Veahavta LeRe’echa Kamocha will stop us from getting angry at our fellow man.