BS"D

Have you have ever done some emotional management on trying to tame your anger? The Torah warns us in numerous places about the destructive and detrimental effects of anger. From punishment, suffering, sickness, memory loss, foolishness to even murder, anger can get you into a lot of trouble. Just check out the twelfth chapter of the Ways of the Righteous where the author quotes numerous sources and elaborates at length on this evil and lowly character trait. Yet most people who work on controlling their anger have a hard time conquering what I would call "the mother of all angers" - justified anger. What about when you're absolutely "right" to get angry? Well you might be right, but the Torah says you're wrong.
In Parshas Mattos Numbers Chapter 31:14-17 it tells us how Moshe got angry: And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, the captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds, who came from the service of the war. And Moses said unto them: 'Have you saved all the women alive? Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to revolt so as to break faith with the Lord in the matter of Peor, and so the plague was among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him.
Gemara Pesachim 66b explains the story: Resh Lakish said: As to every man who becomes angry, if he is a Sage, his wisdom departs from him; if he is a prophet, his prophecy departs from him. If he is a Sage, his wisdom departs from him: we learn this from Moses. For it is written, And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host etc. and it is written later: Verse 21: And Eleazar the Priest said unto the men of war that went to the battle: this is the statute of the law which the Lord hath commanded Moses etc. It follows that the law had been forgotten by Moses.

Was Moshe justified in getting angry because they did not kill the women? He surely was. What the Midian women had done to perpetrate the downfall of the Jewish people was whole reason behind the war. The Or Hachayim explains that they where deserving of the death penalty because they caused the Jews to do idol worship. In spite of all this Moshe lost his wisdom and forgot the law.

What do we learn from all this? The negative effects of anger occur even when the anger is justified.

Here is a little story to help make the point. After a long and drawn out court case involving a horrible car accident in which a pedestrian was killed, the Judge concluded that the driver was guilty. The circumstances were that the traffic light was still blinking yellow and the pedestrian had the right to cross the street. The Judge banged loudly with his hammer and concluded that the pedestrian was right, dead right.

Anger has no friends and its negative consequences extend even when it's fury and wrath are warranted. Knowing this can help us to rein in our anger and bring it to a halt. Even if we are one hundred percent right to be angry, we don't want to be dead right. Anger can cause irreparable damage. Like it says in Pesachim 66b: R. Mani b. Pattish said: Whoever becomes angry, even if greatness has been decreed for him by Heaven, is cast down.

Based on the words of Rabbi Chaim Smulowitz, the late Rav Rosh Yeshiva of Mirrer z'tzal