Parashat Ki Tisa

Many will say, and rightly, that anger stems from arrogance, ignorance, or insult. Rav Kook offers an additional option: sometimes anger stems precisely from an inner might that does not succeed in coming to expression. Within a person forces accumulate - thoughts, talents, and creative power that seek to be revealed in the world. When they are blocked and remain imprisoned within him, they press upon the soul and give birth to an inner froth. And what is true of a person is true also of the world. Great creative forces that find no path to building eventually burst forth as wars, violence, and rage.

Parashat "Ki Tisa" describes exactly such a moment. Moshe Rabbeinu descends from Mount Sinai with the Tablets of the Covenant, the greatest spiritual creation ever given to man. But then he encounters a people that exchanges an immense light for a golden calf. And when the great light meets a reality that is unable to contain it, the tablets shatter. Sometimes great anger does not stem from bad traits, but from the fact that there are too few vessels in the world to contain a great light...