 One of the questions that is asked, one question that people are curious about, is why do we have a Torah? Why do we have a Torah? What is the purpose of the Torah? What is the purpose of Judaism? And our rabbis teach us that one of the main purposes, actually they say the main purpose, the main purpose of the Torah and of Judaism is to help make us better people, to help us improve our lives. The Vilna Gom, one of our greatest rabbis, taught that the entire purpose we are in this world, the whole purpose that every one of us is in this world is to improve our characters, to become better people, and to overcome the challenges that we have in life. Each one of us has challenges. Every single person, even the greatest rabbi in the world has problems, has challenges, has difficulties. And our purpose in the world is to overcome these challenges. That's why we're here. And we're taught that if we don't work on improving these problems that we have, then we're wasting our entire life. Now on the road, on this road to self-improvement, King David, our holy King David, wrote that we should first stop doing things that are wrong, and then we should try to improve and do things that are good, right? First, don't make any mistakes. And then you could try to become better. They say in medicine doctors are taught the first rule of medicine is cause no harm. Maybe you won't save the patient, at least don't kill the patient, right? The first step is don't cause harm. So if you want to have a beautiful garden, if you want to plant a beautiful garden, the first thing that you have to do is to remove the rocks and the weeds and the garbage, because if on the field there's all this garbage and weeds and junk, nothing will be able to grow. So before we're able to make our lives into a beautiful garden and to become good people and great people, we have to first clear away the destructive parts of our personalities. And most of us know that one of the worst personality traits is anger, is impatience. We know that people that are angry, it only causes misery in their lives. We know that people that are angry, they destroy their health. It could raise their blood pressure. It can cause heart disease. Anger kills us. It literally kills us. Anger is self-destructive in so many ways. We're hurting ourselves. You know in the Torah, we just read about the plagues in Egypt, the makot. And we know there were 10 plagues and the second plague was the plague of Svardaia of frogs. But we know that the word that the Torah uses is Svardaia, frog. It was the plague of frog. One frog came. That was the whole plague. One frog came. And we're told that the Egyptians, when they saw this frog, they got so angry, they started to hit the frog. And what happened? It multiplied and it became two frogs. And they got more angry. And they started to hit those two frogs and it became four frogs. And they got angrier. And they hit those four frogs and it became eight frogs. And they kept on getting angrier and angrier until Egypt was full of frogs. Now you ask yourself, are they crazy? They see what's happening. They see that every time they hit a frog, it multiplies into more frogs. So why do they keep on doing it? The problem is only getting worse. The answer is that anger takes over our lives. Anger when we get angry, we can't think straight. We can't think. We go crazy. The police have found that one third, one third of car accidents happen because people are furious when they're driving in their car. They're behind the steering wheel and they get so angry with someone else that they can't drive properly and it causes accidents and people get hurt and people get killed. Why? Because they can't control their anger. We all know as well that anger destroys our relationships. How many friendships, how many marriages were destroyed because people couldn't control their anger? I know people who grew up in a house where one of their parents or both of their parents were always angry and these children have been damaged for their entire lives because they grew up as children, always frightened, always afraid. They were always worried that their father was going to scream at them. And when you grow up like that from a little child, year after year living in a house with that kind of poison, it makes people sick. It hurts them. For people who are angry, they have no quality of life. Their life is not a life. It's not a life. People who are angry, they can never learn. They can't learn. You know why? Because if anyone criticizes them, they get angry and you know what happens? No one is going to criticize them anymore. Who wants to talk to someone that every time you make a suggestion, every time you point out, you know, you might have done something wrong, they explode, they want to kill you, you're not going to try to help them anymore. So someone who is an angry person cannot learn or rabbis teach that you can know about a person by three things. Three things tell you about a person. Kiso, their pocket, how they handle their money. Number two, Koso, their cup of wine, how they handle alcohol, right? We all know that the rabbis teach us, nichnas jayin, yotse sod, that if a person drinks wine, secrets come out, meaning they'll tell you exactly how they feel. People that are drunk, they just let themselves out. So one, number one is Kiso, your pocket, how you handle money. You could tell a lot about a person, how they handle their money. Are they generous? Are they stingy? Number two, Koso, how they handle their drinking. And number three, Kaaso, their anger. And the way a person deals with their anger and being patient tells you a lot about who they are. Now the truth is that sometimes, sometimes there is a place for anger. Sometimes, for example, if you see something terrible happening and it makes you angry and then you're going to do something about it, that anger is not so terrible. Remember when Moshe, Moses, saw the Egyptian beating the Jew? So Moses got upset. It got him angry and he went and he helped. So if you're moved, if you are moved because something bothers you and that can be a little bit of angry and you do something about it, there's a place for that kind of anger. Or sometimes we get angry with ourselves. I say, what did I do? We get upset with ourselves. We get angry with ourselves because sometimes we do very bad things. I went and I ate the whole cake, the whole cake the size of this table. I ate it and the next morning I feel sick. I say, what did I do? I get angry with myself and I say, you know what? I'm not going to do it again. So if that kind of anger with ourselves leads us, if it gets us to improve, that kind of anger is okay. I'm sure it never happens in this school but sometimes a teacher has to look like they're angry. They have to make the students feel, uh-oh, the Rebbe is upset. The teacher is angry, I better be better. Okay. So sometimes there's a place for anger. We can use it but you know what? Anger is like dynamite. It's like explosives. You have to be very careful with it, very careful with it. The Torah teaches us that normally in life, normally we should try to walk in the middle. We should try to be not to the extreme. So for example, I shouldn't be so generous that I give away every penny that I have. I shouldn't be so generous that I give away everything because now I'm going to be poor. I won't have anything. I shouldn't be so cheap with my money. I shouldn't be so tight with my money that I will never give any of it away. And you know what? There are people like that. There are people that have millions of dollars and they can't give away a dollar. There's something wrong with them. So our rabbis teach us, the Torah teaches us, don't be so generous that you give everything away. Don't be so cheap that you can't give anything away. You have to walk in the middle. You've got to find balance. But our rabbis teach us that when it comes to two things, you have to go to the extreme. And what is that? One is anger. You have to wipe it out. And number two is arrogance. The rabbis teach that Hashem loves people who don't get angry. God loves you if you don't get angry. The rabbis teach that the world, our world, only exists. It only exists in the merit because of people who are angered but they don't get angry. When people feel angry, when they feel angry, but they don't express their anger, the whole world exists if you do that. One of our great rabbis was once driven to school, his Ishevah, by a student. And this rabbi was old and he was one of the greatest rabbis in the world. And as he left the car, the student closed the door of the car onto the rabbis' fingers. Can you imagine how much that hurts? And the rabbi didn't make a sound. He didn't make a sound. He walked calmly into the Ishevah and that was it. Can you imagine how bad that student would have felt if the rabbi would have started screaming but the rabbi controlled himself? The rabbi controlled himself. Great Jews work very hard, very hard to control their anger. It doesn't happen by itself. You have to work on it. One of our great rabbis said he worked for 14 years. He worked 14 years to control his anger. There's a famous story about him where when he was older already, his wife had died and he remarried. He's already an older man and he has his new wife and it comes Sukkot, Sukkot, the holiday and the rabbi goes to his outside his house and he builds the Sukkot like he built it every year in the same place in the backyard. His wife says to him, you know, I think maybe the Sukkot would be better over there. He doesn't say anything. He takes down the whole Sukkot. He moves it and he puts it over there and then she says to him, you know, I think you were right. I think it's better over there. What did he do? Did he look at her? Did he make a face? Did he get angry? Did he scream at her? No. He smiled. He took the Sukkot down and he put it back where he had put it all those years before. That's pretty amazing. We learned in the Talmud that one of the great rabbis was teaching a student that had a hard time understanding the Gomorrah and he taught him 400 times over and over and over and over again until the student was able to understand the Gomorrah. Imagine someone having the patience to teach the same piece of Gomorrah 400 times. We know the famous story that the Gomorrah tells us, the Talmud teaches us, about one of the greatest Jews named Hillel and two men made a bet and one of them said, I'll give you $400 if you can make Hillel angry. I'll give you $400 if there's a fortune back then. So what did the other man do? He waited until Friday afternoon when everyone is busy getting ready for Shabbos and almost right before Shabbos Hillel was showering. There's a knock on the door. Is there someone here named Hillel? Is there someone here named Hillel? Hillel was in the shower. He gets out. He drives himself. He puts on a bathrobe. He goes downstairs. He opens the door. He says, yes, I am Hillel and this man asks him a very stupid question, a ridiculous question. Now, most people would have said, for this, you're bothering me right before Shabbos. For this, I had to get out of the shower. Get out of here. But Hillel very patiently answered this ridiculous question. And then the man left. Five minutes later, Hillel was back in the shower. Another knock on the door. Is Hillel here? Is Hillel here? Hillel puts on his bathrobe again, goes downstairs. He sees the same person. You know, if it was me, I would say, ah, anudnya coming to bother me again. What is he dragging me or what is he making me crazy? Hillel says to him, hello, can I help you? He smiles at the man. And the man says, yes, I have another very important question, a very important question. And Hillel says, please ask me. And the man again asks him a very, very foolish question, very foolish question. And Hillel gives him an answer. Hillel explains to him and the man goes, man leaves. He doesn't say thank you. He leaves. Hillel tries to go back to the shower to finish getting ready for Shabbos. And five minutes later, there's another knock on the door. Hello. Is Hillel here? Is Hillel here? Hillel gets out of the shower. He drives himself off again. He puts on his bathrobe. He probably knows who's knocking. He comes to the door and it's the same person. He says, I have another very important question. Hillel says, please, please ask me if I can help you. I'll be happy to help you. And the man asks him now a third question, a very, very foolish question. And Hillel very patiently explains to him, answers him. And now this man gets very upset. This man gets very upset and says, you, I hate you. And I wish there was no one in the world like you. And Hillel says, why? He says, because you made me lose 400 zoos, $400. And Hillel says, it's better for you to lose $400 than for me to get angry. Now, where does anger come from? Why does it happen to us? Why do we get angry? So the rabbis teach in the Talmud that anyone who explodes with anger, it's like they worshiped idols. It's like they worshiped idols. Why is this? Because an angry person doesn't really believe that God knows what he's doing, that God runs the world, that God controls everything. And the person that gets angry feels, you know what? I could run the world better. I know how things should go. God, he doesn't do a good job. The person who gets angry all the time, they don't really believe in God because for the angry person, the only thing in the world that's important is what they want. Nothing else matters. What God wants, who cares? What other people want, who cares? Only what I want. That's the only thing that's important. And they become so focused on themselves, just me, me, me, me, me. There's no room for God. They push God away. And that's like someone who's worshiping an idol. And what idol are they worshiping? What's the name of that idol? Me. They're worshiping themselves. And when anything gets in the way of what they want, they get angry. Anyone that gets in their way, they want to kill that person. They cannot tolerate anyone who doesn't do what they want. They can't tolerate. Now, this kind of anger is not only related to worshiping the self and not really believing in God. It's also related to arrogance. These are two things that are going on. The person that's always angry is arrogant, which means they think that they are the greatest thing in the world is me. And what happens when a person is so full of themselves, they're so arrogant, they literally push away God and they become like an atheist. They become like someone who doesn't believe in God. And this is where anger comes from. Now, the truth is we all can control our anger. We can control it. Let me give you an example. Imagine that a person buys a beautiful brand new car. A person spends a lot of money and they get a car that they always wanted to have. And on the first day, they're driving their car and they stop at a red light and someone behind hits them from behind. The car behind crashes into their brand new car on the first day. This person is furious, furious. And if he could, he would rip the head off the person who hit them. What does he do? He gets out of his car and he starts walking over to the other car and he wants to scream at them or maybe even hit them. And the other driver gets out and he's seven feet tall and he has muscles on top of his muscles. And this person who has the car, he says, excuse me, I feel terrible. I'm sorry I stopped so suddenly and I caused you to hit my car. He had a, he was going to explode. He was going to scream at this person. He was very quickly able to control his anger and he said to the person, I'm sorry, and he went back into his car. Now I want to conclude today. I want to finish our time together by sharing with you some of the strategies, some of the ideas that Artora has to help us control our anger. There are many, many books that have been written to help people become more patient and control their anger. There's brilliant, wise teachings on how we can improve in this area. One thing that we could all do is just to take out an article, a book that was written about how anger destroys our lives. You read a book like that, you watch a video on that topic, you speak to a doctor and they explain how people that are dealing with anger all the time and are impatient, they're destroying their health, it leads to heart attacks, it just kills people. That will help us control our anger. You know one of the things they were so concerned for years that people were killing themselves by smoking cigarettes. So one of the things they were able to do to help people stop smoking was to show them what happens when you smoke. They showed pictures of people's lungs and how the lungs were being destroyed. They showed people who had to have their voice box removed. So when people were able to see the effects of smoking and how it was hurting them, they started to stop smoking. So if we could understand that anger destroys our lives and understand how it might help. Number two, the rabbis teach that a wise person, a smart person, is someone who is able to see what is going to happen. Right? That's a smart person. If you play chess, so you know that a good chess player is able to see what's going to happen in the next move, in two moves. If you could look into the future and see what's going to happen, that means you're pretty smart. So a good thing to do is to try to anticipate when you might get angry. There are situations in life which we know that we might get angry. And what's good is to plan a healthier response, to plan a healthier response. One of the times when families get into fights is when they're going to go on a trip, for example, and everyone is running late. Let's say it's right before Shabbat, right before Shabbos, and you're going to be going away for Shabbos, and it's late, and everyone's trying to get out of the house, and everyone's running late, and everyone's getting impatient, and everyone starts to scream at everyone else. So you don't want a smart thing to do is to start getting ready earlier. Don't wait until the last minute. And one of the things that causes us to get angry is when we are rushed, when we're rushing. And when you're rushing, you can't think clearly, and you're under pressure, and that pressure can cause you to get upset and impatient and angry. So be smart and don't wait until the last minute to do things. Start earlier. One of the great rabbis teaches us that you know what a good thing to do is when you're speaking to someone else. Don't do it quickly. Do it slowly. Because when you're communicating very quickly, it's easier to get angry. When you slow down, you slow down the tendency to explode. Another thing to do is to ask yourself, is it really worth getting so angry about this? Ask yourself before you scream at someone, is it really worth getting angry so angry about this? To ask yourself, what might happen when I scream at this person? A person screams at their wife. If they were thinking for a minute, they would say, you know what, maybe she's going to scream back. And maybe we're going to get into a horrible fight. Who needs that? That doesn't cause happiness. So just to think before we act, to think and ask, is this the smartest thing to do? Maybe there's a better way of reacting in this situation. To ask yourself, you know what, someone just made me upset. Will I still be angry about this in five days? Was it so terrible that I'm going to still be angry in five days? One of the things that our great rabbis taught is that if you have a hard time controlling your anger, at least don't express it right away. Don't express it right away. One of the great rabbis had a special coat and whenever he got angry, what would he do? He would first go to the closet and he would get this special coat and he would then he would put it on and you know what? By the time he went to the closet and put on his coat already, he wasn't feeling so angry. Another great rabbi advised his students that if they ever got into an argument with their wife, what should they do? He gave them a little body, a little bottle of what he called holy water. He gave them a little bottle of holy water and he said if you ever get into an argument with your wife, first take some of this water and drink some of it but don't swallow it. Hold it in your mouth as long as you can and they would find that after a few minutes they weren't so angry anymore. Another very important thing to do, very important thing to do especially if you have a problem in this area, some people are challenged more than others, so if this is a problem that anyone has, this is a good thing to doven for, to pray to Hashem, please help me with my anger. It's a great thing to pray for and you'll be surprised how incredibly powerful these kind of prayers are, that when a person is dovening every day for help from Hashem with their anger, they will find that they will improve. Another thing to do is to use humor in a situation that could actually become very, very bad. Some people, if they do something terrible, they get upset with others. Imagine that it's Friday afternoon and everyone's cooking for Shabbos and you have the big pot of chili and all of a sudden it slips out of your hands and it drops all over the floor. Now some people will get so upset they'll start screaming, they'll scream at the first person that comes into the room, but you know what a better thing to do is to laugh at yourself, just to laugh at yourself and say, oh, what a klutz I am. I'm such a klutz. Something's wrong with me, but rather than scream and get other people upset and other people embarrassed and other people nervous, make a joke about yourself. Use humor to diffuse a tense situation. I always feel that one of the most powerful things that we can do to help in this area of anger is to judge people favorably. Let me give an example to show what that means. When I got married, I forgot to invite a good friend of mine to the wedding. I didn't invite a good friend of mine to the wedding. Now he could have gotten very, very upset. He could have gotten angry with me. He could have had a grudge against me. He could have said, oh, I'm not going to invite him to my wedding. He could have, he could have started talking to other people about me. He could have started saying, oh, that go back, that Michael's go back. He is a snake. He's horrible. Just because I made a mistake. It could have started a whole argument, a whole war. What did he do? He said to himself, maybe they sent me an invitation and it got lost in the mail. Maybe they just made a mistake. Maybe they forgot. There's so many maybes you can come up with when you're trying to give people, when you're trying to judge people favorably, you're trying to say, maybe there's a good reason for what happened. Maybe it was just a mistake. And that's what my friend did. He didn't judge me in a negative way. He didn't judge me in a bad way. He thought that everything was okay. He just came to the wedding and we had a great time. The Torah teaches us that what is much healthier than getting angry with people, with getting very angry is just calmly going over and speaking to them. If someone upsets you, if someone hurts you, if someone disappoints you, so rather than screaming and getting angry and causing a fight, you maybe wait a few days and then go to them and say, you know what? I just want to speak with you about something that's upsetting me and have a polite conversation. And you know what? They'll probably be able to explain what happened or maybe they'll just apologize. But the Torah says this is the healthier way of dealing with times when we are upset. Another very powerful thing to do is to put Hashem into the picture. What does that mean? It means to imagine that Hashem is watching you. Imagine that Hashem is watching you. And just like there are certain people that we wouldn't want to do things in front of. So for example, would I want my mother watching me as I screamed at someone at the top of my lungs? Would I do it if my Rebbe was watching me? There are certain things that if I'm in the street with a friend by ourselves and my friend gets me angry, I might scream my head off at them. But maybe if my Rebbe was standing there, I would behave differently. If my father was standing there, I'd behave differently. The truth is Hashem is always watching what we're doing. And if we just think about that, we just think about the fact that God is always in the picture. It changes the way we behave. I'm going to share three more ideas. Number one, think about the fact that life is short. Life is short. We're not here forever. And just realize that it's not worth your energy. It's not worth the damage that it's going to cause. You have better things to do with your time. You have better things to do with your time than to waste it on something that's so unproductive and unhealthy. Another thing to do is to practice being patient. Practice. The only way we will succeed in anything in life is by practicing. So some rabbis teach that it's a good thing to do to put yourself in a situation. Put yourself in a situation where you're going to have to be patient. For example, you go to the supermarket. You know, sometimes they have someone that's training to be a cashier. They don't know how to do it yet. They're just learning. If you go on that line, it takes twice as long. So go to that line and learn how to just wait. Learn how to be patient. There are many situations in our lives that we know it's going to be hard. And if you practice every day being patient, you're building muscles. You're building your muscles of patience. And you'll be able to use them when you need them. One last idea. The rabbis teach that every part of our body has something that protects it. So your eyes have your eyelids and your eyelashes. Your ears, how do you protect yourself from hearing something that you shouldn't hear? The rabbis say you can put your fingers in your ears like this. Every part of our body, our heart has bones and muscles, right? Every part of the body has something that protects it. So what is it that protects us against bad emotions like anger, like jealousy? What protects us from that? The rabbis say the protection is simcha, is happiness, is joy. A person that works on making their lives happier, to have more joy, to have lives that are positive. I'm doing good things. I'm doing positive things. I'm helping other people. I'm trying to make other people feel good. The Talmud tells that there was a person in the marketplace and they were told this person over there, actually there were two of them, these two people, they are on the highest level. They're on the highest level and the person wanted to know what makes them so great. And they were told that these two people, if they ever see someone that looks depressed, that looks sad, they go over and they tell them jokes and they make them happy. This is the highest level and so if we want to be the kind of people that won't get angry so much and won't get impatient and won't scream at people, one of the things that can help prevent that is just by becoming people that are happier and more positive and have more joy and are trying to make other people happy, we're much less likely to explode in anger and we'll have much happier lives.