Ari (Left), Zinny (Right), and I enjoy a water hike at Ein Gedi near the Dead Sea.
The Coffee Machine
Living in the Yeshivat Orayata dorms with 70 other 18 year old boys in the Old City of Jerusalem was an unbelievable experience. We formed deep relationships, learning new insights, having late-night theological discussions, and playing basketball next to the walls built by Suleiman the Magnificent 500 years ago.
However, these relationships were not always so smooth.
In the beginning of the year, my friend Zinny had had enough of the instant coffee the yeshiva provided. He wanted to upgrade to a fancy Nestle coffee machine with latte pods and foamed milk- the whole shebang.
Zinny went around, asking people to split the $300 machine with him. I was never a big coffee drinker, but since I thought it would help me stay awake in class, I committed to chip in. But after committing, I regretted it, having a vision, a chazon, but not like what Avigayil read in the haftarah this Shabbat, chazon Yeshayahu, it was chazon Niv: realizing I probably won’t drink from this coffee machine. Therefore, I kept pushing off giving my friend the $50 for my stake. He kept on nagging, and instead of saying no, I gave the money for the machine. After collecting everybody's money, my friend bought the machine, but, alas, my chazon was spot-on: I used the machine once and realized I wouldn't use it again for the rest of the year. I told Zinny I'd like to get my $50 back,
refunding my portion, and I won’t use it anymore.
However, Zinny refused. He said I bought part of it and that's the final word .
Then I got angry. I imagined myself litigating my case against him: “I didn’t even want to buy a stake in the first place, but you pressured me. And now, right after you bought the machine, I’m offering to relinquish my position fairly; not 2 months after buying it and using it many times, but a few days after and only using it once.”
My anger manifested itself in sending five consecutive Venmo requests to Zinny.
Eventually, though, my anger subsided, and Zinny and I are great friends till this day.
But as we shall see further, this anger could've been avoided.
Shabbat Chazon
The Shabbat before Tisha B’Av is called Shabbat Chazon, named after the opening words of the haftarah, describing the חזון ישעיהו, the vision of Isaiah, which warns of the impending destruction of the first temple. Isaiah finished this particular prophecy with “Zion will be redeemed in justice.” (Isaiah 1:27) Where was justice in my case?
This leads me to a related topic: sinat chinam, commonly translated as “baseless hatred.”
The Gemara in tractate Yoma 9b says the Temple was destroyed for sinat chinam. What exactly is this sin? A sin for hating fellow humans for no reason? The sin of disliking someone out of the blue?
Actually, the term baseless hatred makes very little sense–most of us don't go around and just start hating Joe Schmoe walking down the street. Nobody does this!
So as Rabbi David Forhman suggests, the Gemara must be talking about something else.
A thermometer and a fact-checker
The Gemara in tractate Gittin says “it was because of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza that Jerusalem was destroyed.”
What about this story is so striking and relevant that our rabbis decided to link it to one of the Jewish people’s greatest tragedies?
Rabbi Forhman, through his excellent aleph beta videos, explains that in the Kamtza & Bar Kamtza story, we see sinat chinam not as baseless hatred, but as righteous anger. The type of anger where you think you are right, justified, and deserving. But because your facts are wrong and anger level is unchecked, you spiral out of control.
He suggests we have two fail-safes to prevent us from reaching this righteous anger: 1) justified response thermometer, and 2) fact checker.
The justified response thermometer gauges each interaction and measures the level of
provocation. This allows for a response based on how much you measured the provocation. For example, someone cuts you in line at the store. The thermometer tells you on a scale of 1-10 your anger level is at a 3, and the justified response is to tell the person to “go to the back of the line”. If your fail safe didn’t work, your anger would spiral out of control and you might go out to the parking lot and slash the person’s tires.
The second fail-safe is a fact checker. Before letting righteous anger take over us, we stop and ask “is my version of events the correct one here?” Because if we have the wrong facts, it leads us to latch onto the righteous anger. Here's an example. You are driving late at night in the rain. Suddenly, another car veers into your lane and crashes into you. You noticed there was a phone screen shining in the driver's window. You start to boil. “What kind of careless schmuck texts and drives in the middle of a rainstorm!” You exit the car and see it wasn’t the driver who had the phone, but the front passenger. You look further, and right in front of their car is a large tree branch which caused them to swerve into your car. Fact checking the situation is a key barrier to misplaced righteous rage.
So the two fail safe questions are:
How angry should I be?
What are the facts?
Now let's apply it to the Bar Kamtza story.
The Host, Bar Kamtza & Rome
Part 1: Host
The story begins with a host organizing a giant party, with all the rabbis and elites of the city attending. It was the Met Gala of 1st century Jerusalem.
The host had a friend named Kamtza and an enemy named Bar Kamtza (I always get confused between the two, so a helpful mnemonic is B in Bar stands for Bad). The host told his servant to invite Kamzta, but he accidentally invited the host’s enemy, Bar Kamtza.
As the Host is making the rounds at his party and sees his enemy, he goes into a fit of rage. Bar Kamzta, who thought he was truly invited, pleads to stay multiple times, even offering to pay for the party. But the host sees this as his enemy intentionally trying to ruin his party, so he throws him out.
Let’s analyze. The anger thermometer is pretty high, let's say 9/10. If you're crashing my party, I'm going to be pretty angry. If the story he’s telling himself is true, it's a serious provocation.
Now the second fail-safe of looking at the facts. By further investigating and looking at the facts, the host would’ve seen the servant made an innocent mistake and Bar Kamtza did not come to spite him on purpose.
But instead, the host has an explosion of righteous anger.
Part 2: Bar Kamtza
After being thrown out, Bar Kamtza feels a rage of his own. He directs it not towards the host, but the Rabbis who were at the party and did nothing. So to punish them, he went to the Roman governor of Jerusalem and claimed the Jews were rebelling. To test the Rabbis, the Roman governor sent a calf to be offered on behalf of Rome. With his righteous anger, Bar Kamtza slit the mouth of the calf, so the Rabbis wouldn't be able to offer a blemished animal.
What if Bar Kamzta had asked our thermometer question- “how angry should I really be?”
His anger towards the host is somewhat justified. But his anger towards the Rabbis, not that high. While they are authority figures who did nothing to stop harm, it doesn’t merit accusing the entire Jewish people of rebellion. Bar Kamzta should have let his anger dissipate, but instead, he had an explosion of righteous rage himself. .
Part 3: Rome
When the Rabbis received the calf with a blemish, they were caught between a rock and a hard place- offer a calf with a blemish or kill Bar Kamzta so he doesn't tell the Romans. In the end the Rabbis do nothing, and Bar Kamzta tells the Roman general that the Jews did not offer the calf, and Nero goes to Jerusalem to put down the rebellion.
Let's analyze.
If the Roman general had stopped and used the fact checker fail-safe, the whole escalation would have been avoided. He would’ve seen the Rabbis refused to give the offering not because of disloyalty to Rome, but a legal technicality of the blemish. Once again we see unchecked anger lead to dire conferences.
From the three episodes of the Kamtza and Bar Kamtza story, we learn Sinat Chinam is not hatred without a reason, but disproportionate hatred.
It teaches us to use the fail safes to prevent righteous anger from spiraling. It's what the host should've done, what Bar Kamtza should've done, what Rome should've done.
It's what I should’ve done when I paid 50$ for a coffee machine that I was no longer going to use.
When we feel terribly wronged, let’s commit to asking “how angry really should we be?” and “have we checked all the facts related to this situation?” These questions could save us from destroying what’s important in our lives: family, friends, and the ties that bind our communities together.
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