Tale of Two Wolves

Let me tell you a story from my book The Trail to Tranquility: Two Russian soldiers were once on a training maneuver in the Siberian forest, in the middle of the winter at midnight. The light of the full moon reflected on the snow, so the woods were well illuminated.

All of a sudden, they heard a thud. A distressed wild turkey with a broken wing had fallen from the treetops. Within seconds, two hungry wolves arrived on the scene. One grabbed the turkey by the wing, and the other sunk its teeth in the turkey’s thigh. The two wolves began a tug of war. When neither wolf succeeded to free the turkey from the other’s grasp, they attacked each other. Viciously and mercilessly, they literally tore each other apart, until one wolf dropped dead on the snow. The victor limped away, dragging the turkey between his teeth and leaving a trail of blood on the snow. A few minutes later, he keeled over and died too.

The gruesome but profound incident conveys a powerful message: The turkey weighed more than twelve pounds; it would have been a more-than-adequate dinner for both wolves. Their greed led them to anger, and their anger led them to violence. As a result, three corpses in were left in the snow – the turkey and the two wolves.

The Talmud teaches a consequent rule of thumb from situations like the wolf fight: Wherever you have peace, you have abundance; with no peace, starvation is prevalent.

Often, husbands and wives fume at each other about financial difficulties just like the two wolves over the dead turkey. Such anger is detrimental to their cause, both from a rational and a spiritual standpoint, as follows:

Rational standpoint: When a wife is continuously angry, she seriously weakens her husband, and vice versa. A wife’s wrath gnaws at a husband’s confidence and self-image, two of his major emotional tools for coping with the commercial and professional world. The more an angry wife bombards her husband, the worse his vocational performance. Consequently, the negative effects of anger manifest themselves in the family paycheck.

When a wife doesn’t have enough money to make ends meet, the worst thing she can do is to yell at her husband, especially if he’s industrious and holding a steady job. An intelligent wife should encourage her husband and help him believe in himself. A husband with a supportive wife will normally make every effort possible to fulfill all of her needs.

Rebbe Nachman of Breslev teaches another rule of thumb – an anger-free home is a debt-free home.

Spiritual Standpoint: The Kabbalists teach that the blessings of abundance – income and financial wealth – flow from the upper spiritual worlds to our tangible material world by way of a series of spiritual pipes. One of the predominant “pipes” is the pipe of peace in the home. When anger prevails in a home, the peace pipe becomes clogged or bent, and thereby impairs the flow of abundance. Anger is therefore closely associated with financial loss.

Rabbi Chaim Vital, the leading disciple of the Ariza’l, said that his rebbe was more careful about avoiding anger than anything in the world, for anger and holiness just can’t live together.

The Ariza’l writes that a person loses all of his or her mitzvot when they get angry. Even worse, if up till now, they’ve made some part of their soul correction, they lose that too. So, after people are angry, they lose everything.

Let me tell you what this means in practical terms: Not long ago, a couple that had been married for 18 years came to me. The wife was crying; she was torn with guilt, and she said, “Rabbi, I don’t know what’s happened to me. Lately, all of a sudden, I can’t stand my husband. I don’t want him to get near me.”

The husband was really mad, and blew up at me saying, “Rabbi, if you’re such a big-shot expert on shalom bayit, then do something with that whimsical wife of mine.” The guy was really hostile and downright nasty. After I calmed them both down, I started probing, and discovered that the husband had blown up in a fit of rage.

After the husband had calmed down, his wife didn’t want to look at him. Even so, she was crying – “Rabbi,” she said, “this is my first and only husband; I’ve had 5 kids with him; what’s wrong with me?”

At first, I didn’t have an answer. But then, Hashem reminded me of the lesson of the Zohar, where Rebbe Yehuda teaches that a person loses his neshama when he gets angry. Then it hit me: Marriage is a union of 2 souls; when the soul leaves, a strange dark-side ritually impure spirit enters that person. In the case of the wife that couldn’t stand her husband for no apparent reason, the solution became crystal clear! She was living with a strange man! I told the husband that the only way to mend his relationship with his wife was by uprooting the devastating effects of the anger.

Wisdom and good judgment are from the holy side of spirituality. Anger stems from the impure, evil side of the spiritual coin. As in flipping a coin, either “heads” are up, or “tails” are up; both sides of a coin can’t be face-up at the same time. Therefore, an angry person waves goodbye to wisdom and to good judgment, and loses much – if not all – powers of reasoning.

True happiness goes together with holiness. Anger comes from the dark side, the opposite of holiness. Just as the dark side is the opposite of holiness, sadness is the opposite of happiness. Therefore, whenever anger sways a person to the dark side, sadness sets in as well. Anger and sadness go hand in hand. You can’t be simultaneously happy and angry.

You can’t be healthy with anger. The Zohar says that anger has a negative effect on a person’s entire body. You don’t need a physician to enumerate the long list of anger-associated diseases and ailments, Heart disease, hypertension, high blood pressure, ulcers, indigestion, and strokes. Anger easily triggers asthma, and severely damages the body’s immune defenses. Unfortunately, anger shortens a person’s life span.

The good news is that if your current physical condition will help you reach the age of eighty, get rid of your anger and you’ll happily and healthfully reach, with Hashem’s help, the age of a hundred, amen!.