Bullying is as old as the mountains.

The Torah is full of accounts of yucky people bullying others, and manipulating them, and obsessing over honor and ‘keeping up appearances’, with Lavan and Esav coming to mind.

I’d love to pretend that bullying, manipulation, murderous rage fits – yeah, that was only happening 4,000 years ago… Or it’s only a problem for ‘non-Jews’… Or for people who aren’t dati….

But we all know that’s baloney.

Bullying and manipulation is going on all over the place, including in the so-called frum Jewish community, at ‘pandemic’ levels.

Why is this?

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Before we try to answer that, we need to take a small detour.

Many years ago, I started researching the whole ‘narcissicism’ thing, that was becoming a catch-phrase, and a kind of catch-all diagnosis to try and describe the behaviour and motivations of a particularly difficult type of individual.

After a lot of praying on it, and years of heartache, and more years of research, I came to realise that so-called ‘narcissistic traits’ perfectly overlap with the traits of the Erev Rav, as described by both Shimon bar Yohai and the Vilna Gaon (whoever that last guy ultimately turns out to be…).

I pulled all this information together in a book called Unlocking the Secret of the Erev Rav, because the ‘secret’, is that EVERYONE displays some narcissistic traits some of the time, especially if they grew up around narcissists.

And that the only real difference between a so-called ‘unfixable’ Erev Rav-narcissist and everyone eise, is that eventually, ‘everyone else’ makes some sincere teshuva, and can admit they aren’t always perfect.

That’s it.

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Now, if you are personally familiar with this subject (you have my sympathy), you will already know that getting this type of person to admit they ever hurt you, ever bullied you, ever controlled-manipulated-lied etc etc is literally impossible.

The only exception to this rule I have experienced myself, is when we paid a pidyon to Rav Berland for a few people we were having some great difficulties with, and somehow, miraculously, the relationship got ‘sweetened’- at least, for us.

That showed me that ‘Erev Rav-narcissist’ traits are actually a spiritual problem, at their root.

And that they CAN be ‘fixed’, or at least, radically ameliorated, by taking appropriate spiritual steps to do that – even from the outside.

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So now, let’s circle back around to talk about bullying.

It suits most of us to try to pretend that ‘bullying’ is something that only happens in schools.

But the truth is, ‘bullying’ is happening in most families, even the so-called ‘best’ families.

Just, it goes unrecognised unless it involves a component of physical violence.

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The people who ‘bully’ other people the most are husbands and wives, parents, and siblings.

Rav Arush always teaches that the ‘real you’ is the one behind closed doors, and not the shiny, ‘perfect’ external persona that narcissists in particular are very careful to cultivate.

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Let’s be clear: All of us are guilty of ‘bullying’ sometimes, defined as coercing another human being into doing something that’s good for us, but usually not experienced as ‘good’ for them.

The fine line between negative, egotistical bullying and properly disciplining or influencing a child is a huge grey area which I am not going to get into, in this post.

Whilst most parents would hope to keep their own bad middot out of the process of disciplining children, the truth is we are all human beings, and the more inner turmoil, anger, blame and rage we experience in ourselves, the more those bad middot, and more, will come out disguised as ‘discipline’.

So, let’s put the parent-child dynamic to one side for now, and focus-in on what non-physical bullying looks like between two adults.

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The soil bullying grows in is an arrogant sense of entitlement, that people, or God, or ‘the world’, somehow owes you something.

This translates into a mindset that permits an individual to use any tactics they can to get others to do what they want, including:

• Laying on guilt trips
• Playing the ‘poor me’ / victim card
• Getting angry, passively or obviously, if the other person doesn’t comply
• Trying to ‘cut the other person down to size’ with criticism or barbed comments, or open insults, to crush their self-esteem and make them easier to manipulate and control
• Not taking ‘no’ for an answer
• Threatening ‘consequences’ for daring to have their own opinions, or not doing what you want
• Angry outbursts / rage fits
• The silent treatment

The list could go on and on, but you get the idea.

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Again, even the most refined person who is working on their middot sincerely will occasionally feel aggrieved or upset or frustrated, if someone is not doing what they want, or what they promised, or what they objectively are responsible for doing.

I’m talking about relationships which are stuck in the sole mode of ‘Person A demands what they want, and Person B gives it to them, or there is trouble.’

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Thinking back to my interactions with The Vaccinator, our relationship has been based on the principle that he gets to say and act however he wants, however hurtful, or plain ‘wrong’, and that my choice boiled down to either keeping silent, or sparking off a huge row and ‘rage fit’ which can and does last for years and years and years.

All of us have been treading on eggshells around him for as long as anyone can remember.

It’s just how it was. No-one would ever dream of ‘arguing back’ to his face, or asking him to do something that would take him out of his way, or make him feel a little uncomfortable or put out.

All the bad behaviour – we all just excused it in a million different ways. It was always ‘poor Vaccinator, he’s got such a hard life…’

Externally, he really doesn’t. He’s way more set up, in a whole bunch of ways, than I am.

But ‘playing the victim’ – of life, of God, of ‘fate’, if you want to call it that, instead of taking responsibility for all the issues that our own bad middot are causing us on every level – that is a key part of how this scam works.

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Tov, I could carry on writing this for hours, as you can probably tell.

Let’s cut to the punchline.

Bullying grows out of:

1. A feeling that people / life / God / the world ‘owes us’, which can also be called ‘inflated entitlement’.
2. Anger issues that are not being acknowledged, addressed – and resolved.

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People like to stay angry, because angry people use their anger to intimidate, threaten and control others.

If you want to keep people ‘controllable’ and get them to say ‘how high?’ every time you command them to jump, by all means, stay angry and keep using it as leverage in your relationships.

But, if you want real relationships with other people…

If you want your spouse to be able to really open up, and tell you stuff that’s troubling them even when it’s close to home and hard to hear…

If you want your kid to be able to share their struggles and issues with you, before he gets dragged down to the bottom of the world by them…

If you want to be a real friend, and not just shopping for a free shrink that you get to dump all your issues on without any reciprocity, caring or empathy…

Then, two things need to happen.

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NUMBER 1: CREATE A ‘NO-TOLERANCE’ RULE FOR ANGER.

Especially, your own.

And even more especially, that brand of self-righteous anger that always paints you as the poor victim, and everyone else as abusers.

I will BH write a follow-up post to this, on the emunadik way of handling being bullied, where we can stand up for ourselves and create healthy boundaries, but still understand that everything is all from God, and ultimately, just designed as a test of our own emuna and middot.

I don’t hate The Vaccinator, not at all. I hate what he did and how he’s acted, but I still wish him the best, and I’ve even started praying for him now, that I finally got out of the ‘script’ that’s been controlling my family interactions for so long, and can write my own lines.

But it’s for sure a very narrow bridge to cross, and abusers can abuse the idea of their victims ‘having emuna’ very easily.

Anger is actually an appropriate emotion to feel in the healing process, but there is a huge difference between ‘getting the anger out’ in a safe way, and targeted correctly, than giving yourself permission to turn into the next ‘Mr / Mrs Angry’ who gets to rage at everyone because they are a poor victim.

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NUMBER 2: UNDERSTAND THAT GOD OWES US NOTHING

Every breath is a present.

Every time we can wiggle our fingers, get a good night’s sleep, have a roof over our head, a cup of coffee, a hot shower – God owes us absolutely nothing.

The more emuna we try to have, the more we try to see the tremendous good that still exists in every person’s own dalet amot – the more we see God’s kindnesses to us, the more we tap-in to our own souls, and the more we start to understand that even the ‘lacks’ contain tremendous kindness.

Just, understanding that can take a lifetime of hitbodedut, inner work and prayer.

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Point is: no-one ‘owes us’ a phone call or email.

No-one ‘owes us’ their time and attention.

No-one ‘owes us’ Shabbos invitations, or appearances at simchas, or shiva houses, or parties.

And God also doesn’t ‘owe us’ big houses, lots of cash, a million children, nice communities to live in, great jobs, wonderful shalom bayit…

Everything we have is a free gift from the Creator.

Everything.

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As you are probably starting to understand, this type of thinking is a million miles away from Erev Rav-narcissist thinking.

When God is behind everyone and everything, you don’t have to get stuck playing the blame game any more, for who to pin your misery and suffering on.

It’s from God, tachlis, and your soul and my soul agreed to every single bit of it, before we even got down here.

Instead of trying to ‘control others’, the whole equation becomes one of trying to control ourselves, and especially the bad middot and lack of emuna that are causing us so much suffering.

Instead of becoming permanent, and permanently-angry ‘victims’, we become empowered individuals who understand our experience of life is 100% in our own hands.

The more we work on overcoming our anger and other bad middot, the better our life will be, the more fulfilling and real our relationships will be, and the more good things there will be to rejoice in, and thank God for.

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I’ll stop there for now, I know it’s a lot to think about.

But this existential war that we’re in right now is really internal, not playing out in Gaza, or the Ukraine.

And we win it by uprooting anger and entitlement, and replacing it with emuna that Ein Od Milvado.