A D’var Torah by Rabbi Ariana Capptauber for Purim
Ahashverosh woke up the next morning and felt a nagging in his chest. Perhaps it was acid reflux. Perhaps it was the massive hangover from weeks of heavy drinking. But no, this wasn’t just the wine. There was something else niggling in his consciousness. A memory. Yes, there was an emergency council with his advisors, all red-faced, sloshing their wine and spitting with fury. What were they so riled up about? Why had he called an emergency meeting? He rolled over in bed and felt the cool space beside him, empty of queen or concubine for the first time in weeks.
Queen. Oh yes. Now he remembered why he called the meeting, why he felt ill at ease. Vashti.
He had dismissed her in a fit of rage. She had publicly humiliated him by refusing to obey his direct command in front of his guests. His blood began to boil again at the thought of it.
But then he felt the sensation again, somewhere in the middle of his chest. What was that? Regret. He sighed, smoothing the empty bed sheets beside him, looking at the vanity where Vashti would sit, powdering her face before leaving their chamber. He had been too harsh. So she had not come before him at a banquet. She was self conscious. She never went out without makeup. Was that reason to be rid of her forever?
But his advisors had insisted. They had been more furious than he was, shouting, barely able to contain themselves over the impudence of this woman, their fury ricocheting around the circle, each competing to be angrier than the next. It was desperate and almost fun. His head spinning with wine, he slipped on the slide of anger, down to its natural conclusion.
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In the daylight, however, that conclusion seemed excessive. In return for shaming him, he had shamed her, and not just in front of friends, but in front of the whole kingdom. Now he would never see her again, never delight in her embrace, never cast his eyes upon her lovely countenance. In his anger he had forgotten the good he had with Vashti, and now it was too late.
—
Haman crumpled up the scroll and dashed it against the wall. He couldn’t get Mordechai out of his head. Even with a royal invitation in his hand — the second in a row, to a banquet with only himself and the king and queen, the first of which had been a lavish affair, overflowing with food and wine and joyful banter — even then, he couldn’t get the image of that hateful Jew, standing tall when everyone else was bowing, out of his mind.
Surely, these invitations were a sign that his star was rising. Surely, his appointment to royal advisor was only the latest in a series of steps he would take until he rose until… until who knows how high? And yet something kept dragging him down, worming into his consciousness, so that even from his high post he felt small with jealousy and hate. His thoughts cycled anxiously, vengeful and conniving. But he was a royal advisor, with the power to overthrow kingdoms. Why get so hung up on one insulting nobody?
He picked up the invitational scroll and smoothed it out. His wife Zeresh walked into the room with some of her friends. She would help take his mind off of things. Soon, anyway, would come the 13th of Adar, when Mordechai and his kind would be wiped out. Then, when the whole thing was over, he could go back to making grander plans.
—
Maimonides taught that “anger is an exceedingly bad quality; one from which it is proper to distance oneself to an extreme.” (Mishnah Torah, Human Dispositions 2:3) Yet today we seldom get any distance from anger. The news of the day is likely to upset us, and social media only stokes the flames. In a recent piece on the Daily Show called “Long Story Short: The Economy of Anger,” Sarah Silverman reported that in 2018 an internal Facebook report showed that their algorithm purposely feeds users divisive content in order to increase time on their platform. Posts that make us angry are more likely to keep our attention and get a click. Silverman also revealed how network news shows capitalize on our anger, showing clips of Fox news with quotes like “this story will have you fired up” and “we have a story that will make your blood boil” or “prepare to be outraged.”
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Anger is not a new problem. The characters in Megillat Esther are consumed with petty anger and quick to act on it. In the very first chapter, the king and his advisors are angry enough that they dismiss Vashti, even though the first verse of the next chapter says, “Afterward when the anger of the king subsided, he thought of Vashti and what she had done and what had been decreed against her.” He seems to regret the action he committed in a fit of rage. Haman, too, is consumed by anger. He complains bitterly to his wife Zeresh that though he is honored by the invitations to feast privately with the queen and the king, “all this means nothing to me every time I see that Jew Mordechai sitting in the palace gate.”
Too often we are so prepared to be outraged that we fail to see opportunities for growth and understanding and even gratitude. Ahashverosh was so prepared to be outraged at his queen’s disobedience that he failed to remember what he loved about her, before it was too late. Haman was so preoccupied by his anger at Mordechai that he pursued his plans to the point of folly (good news for us, his enemies).
Anger is not all bad. As Audre Lorde famously commented, “Anger is loaded with information and energy.” Anger can give us good information about an interaction or a system containing injustice, and it can give us the energy to do something about it. When Mordechai despairs over the decree for Jewish destruction, Esther becomes angry with him, telling him not to show public signs of mourning. Mordechai helps her channel that anger away from him and towards Haman and his decree, and ultimately, she is able to use the energy of her anger to take heroic action.
Anger is like fire that, when used productively, can power engines of change but when mishandled can consume anything in its path, including us. Mussar, a Jewish movement to teach ethics and positive internal change, teaches us that with any middah or quality, the goal is to find balance. We can get “fired up” but not to the point of blinding rage. We don’t need to quash anger, but we should mix it with gratitude to cool our jets and channel our energy in a level and intentional way. As we celebrate Purim and read the blood-boiling tale of the Megillah, let us learn to walk the line between overpowering anger and unmoved acquiescence, and so to move toward empowered, powerful, but loving action for change.
Rabbi Ariana Capptauber is the rabbi at Temple Beth El in Harrisburg, PA. She was ordained in 2020 from the Jewish Theological Seminary where she also earned a Masters in Midrash. She was a T’ruah summer fellow in 2016 and a participant in T’ruah’s first set of Communities of Practice in 2022.