A few years ago I was climbing up a jagged canyon wall when I heard a noise akin to the sound of a tambourine. I looked up and saw it — a rattlesnake sat curled on the ledge about three inches from my right hand. We both froze and stared at each other for what seemed like hours.
I was too afraid to move, too fearful to call out, so I just waited and prayed until he finally slithered away into a crevice in the mountain wall.
In hindsight, I think that rattler was actually a very decent fellow. He warned me up front that he was angry, gave me time to respond and, when I left him alone, departed without venting his poison. Come to think of it, I wish I had more friends like that.
It doesn’t take more than a quick Google search to find the myriad self-help books that help us deal with our feelings. Anger, fear, shame, guilt, jealousy, pride, depression and insecurity have all been a part of the human condition since the beginning of time.
For most of us, we first encounter our feelings within our family. The family is the natural breeding ground for the most intimate of feelings: Love and acceptance as well as resentment, anger, loss, jealousy and disappointment have ample room to germinate and grow.
The family is our primary teacher, the place where we learn how to express, harness, channel and cope with our feelings so that ideally we can build a life and home founded on “shalom bayit,” a place of love and peace.
The Jewish encounter with feelings begins with the book of Genesis, which teaches us many things about human nature, feelings and relationships, especially those between family members.
On of the best examples in Genesis of how jealousy between siblings destroyed a family is the story of Cain and Abel. From that story we learn that there is a crucial need to distinguish between the right to have feelings and the right to act on them.
Like Cain, whose offering to G-d was rejected when his brother’s was warmly received, we have the right to feel hurt when we feel misunderstood or unappreciated. Like Cain, we are entitled to feel resentment, jealousy and rage when we try to do our best — but our best never seems good enough — for our parents, teachers or friends.
But what we learn from this tragic story is that while our feelings may be legitimate and necessary to express, the right to act on our feelings must be surmounted when our actions will hurt or destroy others. Simply put, how we feel and how we act must be guided by different impulses.
In Genesis 4:6-7, G-d counseled Cain with these words: “Surely, if you do right, there is uplift, but if you do not do right, sin couches at the door; its urge is toward you but you can be its master.”
Unlike a rattlesnake that has only the impulses of flight or fight, we are able to make conscious choices to determine whether our feelings will control us or whether we will control them.
To be a Jew means that while we are guided by moral authority, we must act with moral autonomy. It is the mastery of our feelings, not the submission to them, that makes us truly human.
The sages of the Talmud put it most succinctly when they asked: “Who is a hero? He who conquers his own urges.”
Copyright © 2013 by the Intermountain Jewish News
