Rabbi Fohrman | Our lead scholar

Rabbi David Fohrman is the founder and lead scholar at Aleph Beta. Over the last two decades, he’s pioneered a way of reading Biblical text that feels both rigorous and revelatory. Through Aleph Beta, he’s given expression to that, developing what is now a vast library of content, spanning all types of media: animated videos, podcasts and books. He’s also embarked on an effort to train a team of Torah scholars adept at the close-reading methodology he’s pioneered – and their work can be found at Aleph Beta, too.

Prior to his founding of Aleph Beta, Rabbi Fohrman served as a senior editor and writer for the ArtScroll Talmud Project. He also taught Biblical themes as adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University, where he had earlier received a Master’s degree in Western intellectual history. Rabbi Fohrman received his rabbinical and Talmudic training at the Ner Israel Rabbinical College, but some of his earliest and most profound exposure to Biblical text analysis came from his encounters with Rabbi Yosef Leibowitz, in his childhood years in Northern California.

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Kamtza & Bar Kamtza

Character List

The Feast-Thrower - the nameless man who hosts a dinner party; he has a friend named Kamtza and an enemy named Bar Kamtza
Kamtza - the feast-thrower’s friend who was supposed to be invited to the party; he never actually appears in the story
Bar Kamtza - the feast thrower’s enemy who accidentally gets invited to the party (and then kicked out)
Rabbis - the greatest rabbis of the time are all at the feast-thrower’s party
Roman Leader of Jerusalem - the nameless man who rules over Jerusalem and tries to send an offering to the Temple when he hears a rumor that the Jews are rebelling

Kamtza and Bar Kamtza

The Talmud tells us that Jerusalem was destroyed because of the story of “Kamtza and Bar Kamtza.” All of Jerusalem was destroyed because of one little incident? That’s a big claim! So what actually is the story of “Kamtza and Bar Kamtza,” and how did it cause Jerusalem to be destroyed?

Here’s how the story goes: in the land of Israel, there was a man who had a friend named Kamtza and an enemy named Bar Kamtza. One day, this man decides to throw a huge feast. He invites everyone he knows, including all of his friends and all of the famous rabbis. He tells his servant to deliver a special invitation to his good friend, Kamtza. However, his servant makes a mistake! Instead of delivering the invitation to the feast-thrower’s friend, Kamtza, the servant gives the invitation to the feast-thrower’s enemy, Bar Kamtza. (After all, their names are so similar! It’s an honest mistake!)

It’s time for the feast. The feast-thrower is walking around the room, greeting all of his guests. He’s happy to see his friends and the rabbis enjoying themselves. Suddenly, his eye catches on something that makes him very angry – there at one of the tables is his enemy, Bar Kamtza! (Now, we don’t know why the feast-thrower and Bar Kamtza are enemies, but we can assume they really don’t like each other). The feast-thrower marches over to Bar Kamtza and yells, “What are you doing here? Leave!”

Bar Kamtza looks around, embarrassed. The entire town is there! He doesn’t want to be thrown out in front of everyone. So he pleads with the feast-thrower, “Please, I’ll pay for my food and drink, if you just let me stay.” But the feast-thrower is still furious, and he refuses. Bar Kamtza keeps pleading, offering more and more until he has offered to pay for the entire feast! Still, the feast-thrower refuses and throws Bar Kamtza out of the feast, as the rest of the guests watch in silence.

Managing Our Anger Levels

Sometimes, it’s really hard to let go of our anger when we feel that we’re right, and the person who hurt us is wrong. While the stories of the feast-thrower and Bar Kamtza seem extreme, it’s not that difficult to think about ourselves getting so angry that we hurt others. Maybe if we can figure out where this harmful anger comes from, we can learn how to control it. We have two instincts inside ourselves that can help us control our level of anger:

Reaction Thermostat - You can imagine that all of us have a thermostat inside of our heads. Our thermostat helps us figure out how angry or upset we should be in different situations. For example, if we’re standing in line and someone cuts us, we might get a little bit annoyed. We might tell the person to get back in their place in line. Maybe that’s not the nicest response, but that amount of anger seems reasonable. What wouldn’t be reasonable? If we start to scream and hit the person who cut us in line. That would be an overreaction. Usually we can trust our thermostat to help us avoid overreacting.
Fact Checker - If we feel angrier than we should be for the situation, then we have another instinct that can help us calm down – our fact-checker. Sometimes we react to a situation out of anger, but then when we calm down and realize what’s actually going on, we feel less angry. For example, maybe you’re angry because your best friend is ignoring you all day on your birthday. But then, in the afternoon, you come home to a surprise party! You realize your best friend has been ignoring you because she didn’t want to spoil the surprise. You might still feel a little hurt that she ignored you earlier, but you’re not so angry anymore, because now you understand the reason behind what she did. Often, when we learn more facts and we see that there’s no reason to be so angry, we can let go of, or temper, our anger.

Usually, these two instincts help us to keep our anger in check. But sometimes they’re not enough! In those rare times, we get even angrier and it’s even harder to calm down. We are way angrier than we should be, but we often don’t even realize that our anger level is out of control.

Losing Control Of Anger

Knowing what we now know about how anger works and how our instincts can help us control it, let’s go back to the story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza and see if we can figure out what went wrong.

We don’t know why the feast-thrower is so angry at Bar Kamtza. Maybe Bar Kamtza was mean to him in the past. Maybe Bar Kamtza excluded the feast-thrower from a party, and now the feast-thrower is trying to get back at him. Whatever it is, it’s clear that the feast-thrower is hurt by and angry at Bar Kamtza.

So then when the feast-thrower sees Bar Kamtza at his party, what do you imagine he might be thinking? He doesn’t know that his servant invited Bar Kamtza by mistake. He figures that Bar Kamtza is trying to ruin his party! And that makes him REALLY angry! And yeah, if that were true, it would make sense for the feast-thrower to feel angry, even if it’s not the nicest feeling.

But at some point, when the feast-thrower sees that his friend, Kamtza, is missing, he realizes there must have been some sort of confusion with the invitations. We would expect him to feel a little annoyed at his servant for the mixup – and sure, maybe also a little angry with Bar Kamtza for whatever reason the two were enemies in the first place. But instead of using his fact-checker instinct to tone down his anger after he realizes what actually happened, the feast-thrower becomes even angrier at Bar Kamtza. He takes all of his anger about the situation out on Bar Kamtza and acts cruelly to him. His “Reaction Thermostat” doesn’t kick in to tell him that his level of anger is too high. His “Fact Checker” doesn’t work to control his anger either. And now, his anger is so big that it’s very hard to control. That kind of anger is like fire. It spreads quickly and it burns anyone in its path. And now it has burned Bar Kamtza.

Now let’s switch to Bar Kamtza’s point of view. Maybe he had come to the party to make up with his long-time enemy. Maybe he had come just to enjoy the company of others. But now he’s been thrown out, humiliated publicly, and he’s really mad. It would kind of make sense for Bar Kamtza to be upset with the feast-thrower – after all, the feast-thrower is the one who threw him out of the party. But instead, Bar Kamtza takes that anger and directs it at the rabbis. He gets SO angry, in fact, that he betrays them to the Romans, putting the entire Jewish people and all of Jerusalem in danger! His “Reaction Thermostat” has failed; he’s waaaay angrier than he should be for the situation. His “Fact Checker” has failed too – he can’t see any reason for the feast-thrower’s reaction, or the rabbis’ lack of reaction. The angry fire spreads from one person to another, and it destroys everything in its path.