Today the Talmud gives us a very important lesson, one that we sometimes forget to apply. We may take it for granted; we may know it, or we may not. The Talmud tells us that Rabbi Yochanan said in the name of Rabbi Yosi that a person should not try to appease someone in their anger. Don't try to make up with someone when they're angry. Don't try to confront them or console them in their anger. It is fruitless. The source for this law, or this concept, is a verse in chapter 33 in Exodus, verse 14. The Talmud actually draws this out from that verse. In order to properly understand the source, let's understand the context of the verse.
So, in Parshat Ki Tisa, in chapter 33, the Jewish people had just finished committing the unimaginable, almost unforgivable sin of the golden calf. Right there at the foot of Mount Sinai, Moses goes up for 40 days and is coming down. Did they miscalculate? Did they intentionally miscalculate? It was the Erev Rav (the mixed multitude) that was campaigning for this crazy golden calf. But at the end of the day, they sinned. Moses comes down in his fury and breaks the tablets. He goes back up the next day for another 40 days and 40 nights, and what he's doing there is praying to God, beseeching Him, pleading with Him: “Please forgive the Jewish people. Please forgive them, and if not, erase my name from your book.” God eventually forgave the Jewish people. He did forgive the Jewish people based on Moses' pleading and begging.
As soon as Moses comes down, he asks God, “Please do me a favor. I want you to be the one that accompanies the Jewish people from here, from the desert, all the way to the land of Israel.” And God's answer is as follows: “My presence will go, and I will provide you rest.” What God is saying is, “Yes, I'll commit to that, but don't let me commit to it right now. Allow my anger to be diffused, to calm down, and then I'll commit to it.”
It's very interesting. Firstly, is there a concept of anger by God? It's a debate I had with my brother earlier today, and my opinion is as follows. All of the human emotions that the Torah speaks to us about God are just ways for us, number one, to understand and relate to God, and number two, for God to go through them and show us how He, as we say in Hebrew, kivyachol (so to say), overcomes them, and how to emulate Him and act as better human beings. So the whole concept of anger by God is just there to show us. It's there to impose upon us. I like to draw the comparison to a father or a mother with their children. The Talmud says that a person should never get angry. But in every negative quality or aspect in a person's life, there is something positive there. And the positive aspect of anger is this: When should anger come? Or when should anger be applied? A parent should sometimes show an angry or stern face when they're disappointed in their child, in order to teach them to do the right thing. Again, a father and mother are only supposed to show an angry face. But their hearts, God forbid, should never be angry. So, if that's what God tells us about how we should act, all the more so, God can never get angry. God only displays or shows as if He's angry in order to warn us, to rebuke us, to get us back on track.
I want to share one very practical point with us today, and that is something we learned from Pirkei Avot, which teaches us the same concept. However, Rabbeinu Yonah, one of the great medieval scholars, teaches us something fascinating. The Mishnah is in chapter 4, Mishnah 18 of Pirkei Avot, in the teachings of our fathers, the ethics of our fathers. It says as follows: “Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar says the same thing: Do not come and appease or make up with your fellow, with your friend, in their time of anger.” Rabbeinu Yonah explains as follows. I want to read you his words; it's very short, and we'll see how practical it is. He says, “You know what's going to happen when you come to your friend or to anybody and try to appease them in their anger? They're going to say something which is unworthy. They're going to say something which is wrong, something they don't really mean.” He continues, “Because what you're doing is adding fuel to their anger; you're adding more anger to their anger.” Someone who's angry—they're disappointed, they're hurt—right now may not be the time to come and approach them about it. You're just going to add to their anger, and they're going to say something they wish they had never said.
In life, on both ends: If we see someone who's angry, don't approach them. Don't let them add to their anger, and don't be a cause of adding more anger to them. Don't put them in a situation where they're going to be compelled to say something they wish they had never said and you wish they had never said—something irreversible. And, on the contrary, when you're angry, know not to answer. Take a deep breath, take a walk. Our sages say, go and do netila (wash your hands), go wash your face, cool yourself down, and don't act in haste.
I'll end with a very famous story, an amazing story that the Sefer Chassidim brings down about a fellow who got married at a young age and had to leave town to make a livelihood. He left, and his business dealings led to his being absent from his new wife for way longer than he ever imagined. He wound up coming home 18 years later. As he was walking into his house, he was about to knock on the front door in the evening, and then he said, “One second, let me peek and see if my wife's really in there.” He peeks in the window and sees his wife sitting on the couch, with her hand around another man on the couch, in the very house where he had left her. He was about to barge in and murder the two of them out of anger. How could his wife cheat on him? Then he remembered something his father told him before he passed away: “My son, before you act in anger, before you act in haste, sleep on it and then act the next morning.” Instead of barging in and murdering the two—his wife and that other man—he sleeps elsewhere. The next morning, cooled down, he meets his wife and learns that the other man on the couch was his very own son. He didn't even know that he had gotten his wife pregnant before leaving town 18 years ago. Today, his son is 18 years old, 17 or 18 years old, sitting with his wife in his home. A person, just by delaying acting on his anger, saved his wife, his son, practically his whole family. May we be blessed to see ourselves in those times of anger, controlling ourselves, making the right decisions, delaying our results and actions that we would like to take. And may we have a Shabbat Shalom.