Anger is a negative emotion, yet many of us get angry. The question is, what triggers our anger. Is our anger justified? Is the person or thing worth it for us to even get angry at, or are we wasting our energy? Why get angry at a delayed plane if we cannot control the outcome? We can perhaps be frustrated, we can even become aggravated at our need to change plans, but how is getting angry going to change any of it? There is no one to blame.
This is what Moses tells G-d in this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa, in defense of the Jewish people after they made the Golden Calf. As Jews who received the Ten Commandments from G-d just forty days earlier, Moses had a right to be angry and disappointed in the Jewish people. He broke the tablets and felt that the Jews might not deserve the tablets. Yet, when he turned to G-d in the Jews’ defense, he said: Why are you, the Omniscient, forgiving G-d even paying attention to what mortal human beings are making? You are insulted that they took some gold and made an idol? Really, you know that it was a mistake. Grow up! You are the infinite G-d and they are finite human beings. Why are you getting angry?!
If G-d would have kept His cool, and approached this situation purely from an intellectual perspective, Moses would have had to use a second argument to defend the Jewish people—after all, what they did was incomprehensible. And he would have argued that the Torah was given in the singular, to him, Moses, only, and therefore, there was a miscommunication. Moses was, after all, the epitome of the Jewish lawyer. The great defender of the Jewish people.
But why did G-d get angry?
G-d did not defend his anger but walked away from it. G-d backed down and gave the Jews a second set of Tablets – better than the first. The Jews did get punished for their sin; after all, what is wrong is wrong, but the punishment came in small doses.
The lesson for all of us is profound. How often in the heat of one’s anger, one cannot see themself calming down enough to be able to take a deep breath and just say “it is unbecoming” of me to be so angry. Just back down and be kind.