Let’s play a quick word-game. If I say “rabbi”, what is the word you most associate with it? Is it “wise” (hopefully), “studious” (probably), “caring” (maybe), or some other term? What is likely, though, is that you did not pick “angry”. Yet that is a theme running through modern rabbinic life.

If you are surprised by this assertion, then a book just published by Reform Judaism reveals that many Reform rabbis and cantors certainly have an angry side to them, even if those other characteristics above also apply.

What are they angry about? Not so much the traditional reasons that lead rabbis to thunder down from the pulpit — such as non-attendance at synagogue or lapses in observances — for most of them recognise that there are many ways of being Jewish and being religious is just one of them, not the sole criterion for judging how Jewish you are.

Instead, their anger is more about the way we behave in general. This is partly as individuals, and the injustices or unpleasantness we inflict on others; and partly collectively, the fault-lines in society that we allow to remain in place even though we know they are wrong.

One very obvious example (there are also some not-so-obvious ones, as you’ll see shortly) is the way some Jews separate their business life and their Jewish life into two totally incompatible compartments.

Whereas Judaism has no problem with making a profit or being well-off, thanks to one’s work, there are clear guidelines about doing so ethically, without misleading a customer, cheating a partner, selling defective goods or reneging on a deal.

However, when Rabbi Mark Goldsmith preached on the subject and emphasised that there was no merit in piously attending Shabbat services if one behaved abominably at work midweek, he was roundly condemned by one attendee for his audacity in discussing monetary matters on a spiritual occasion.

As he writes: “It makes me angry when congregants use the phrase ‘it’s business’ when they mean that their values have to be set aside when they are at work...Judaism does not see the realm of the holy as being divorced from the life of the marketplace”.

Bad behaviour to different fellow creatures — animals — is what angers Rabbi Charles Middleburgh. He accepts that we are permitted to kill them for food and regards shechitah as the most humane form of slaughter, but he rails against what we do to them in other respects.

Whether it be slaughtering elephants for ivory (what do you have on your mantelpiece?), factory farming chickens, force-feeding lambs, overworking horses, maltreating domestic pets: “all these things make me not just angry, but incandescent …animals are sentient beings: they both feel and exhibit emotions, they experience joy and despair, and they feel pain. Those who value animal life very little will come to devalue human life in just the same way”.

It’s politics that angers Rabbi Shulamit Ambalu, especially what has been happening within Labour and the hard-left in recent years. She grew more and more upset as she saw how it was affecting her congregants: “These good people, Labour party members to their very bones, were dispossessed of their political homes by the self-indulgent, unaccountable, resentful and irresponsible hard-left. A political force that put slogans before its own people”.

But what disturbed her most was that this change pushed many Jews into a double silence: they were not only forced out of the party and unable to play any role, but they were also forced into not making any legitimate criticism of Israel that they might otherwise have done, lest they were identified with, or used, by the hard-left.

She strongly upholds the principle that one can separate criticism of Israel (because one cares about Israel) from being antisemitic. But Corbynism made that virtually impossible and stymied the ability of many Jews to show their love of Israel through honest conversations.

There is a toxic silence of another kind which Rabbi Irit Shillor tries to address: how to engage with those who are trans? While some sections of British Jewry find such a concept hard to accept, she takes it for granted that one should respect the chosen identity of someone trans, whether they have had a medical procedure or not: “they have a right to describe themselves to others as they see fit”.

But what if you are a rabbi officiating at a cycle of life event, such as a funeral. Can you refer to their former life, or their former name (their “dead name” as it is sometimes called)? Is that simply a matter of historic fact, or an insulting denial of their subsequent reality?
These discussions can be much more difficult to navigate than many other topics, as they involve people’s identities and their sense of self-worth. One can be for or against measures, for instance, to curtail air travel without causing personal offence, but one cannot discuss someone’s very being without potentially causing great hurt, however unintentional. She is in no doubt, though, that it is time to start that dialogue.

For Rabbi Debbie Young-Somers, time is a luxury we do not have in the cause that rouses her to anger, climate change. For her, it is a profoundly Jewish issue, rooted in the Bible’s injunction for us to care for the world (Genesis 2.15) and echoed in rabbinic tradition ever since.

She is adamant that “Jewish thinkers have understood for millennia that we have a responsibility to respect creation, because God isn’t going to fix the mistakes we make”. This includes the arresting fact that “the nappies our children wear today will outlive them by hundreds of years unless we use cloth or biodegradable ones”.

It is easy to nod and do nothing, so she urges us take measures that will limit our lifestyle but prolong the planet: eating less meat, driving less, holidaying closer to home, wasting less. Her message is blunt: helping the world last longer means altering the way we live drastically.

There are 21 essays in all, each fulminating on a different topic, including invisible women, mental health, Jewish intolerance of fellow Jews, LGBT+ conversion ‘therapy’, online abuse and the superficial nature of the wellness industry.

However, that of Rabbi Howard Cooper raises the question of how legitimate it is to be angry in the first place? Both he and Rabbi Robyn Ashworth-Steen answer it by quoting a car bumper sticker: “If you aren’t angry, you aren’t paying attention”. The ills around us shriek out for a response.

Cooper distinguishes between righteous anger and narcissistic rage. Ashworth-Steen sees the former as being in line with the prophetic voices of Isaiah and Amos: “cold anger — the type of anger that propels us to fight for social justice, not hot anger which can paralyse us and eat us from the inside”.

The message that emerges from every single essay is that righteous anger is religiously appropriate. The question is, what do we do with it: let it simmer without achieving anything, let it hurt us more than the source of the anger, or let it be a spur for change? These angry rabbis want you to use it to transform the world, and do it now.

Jonathan Romain is rabbi of Maidenhead Synagogue. What Makes Me Angry is published by Reform Judaism