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In the 1970s I was walking down a road in Jamaica to the school at which I taught. An open lorry passed carrying a bunch of young men, who shouted, ‘Burn in fire’ followed by a racial slur. It was over in a moment and I continued walking.

That experience came to my mind yesterday when I heard that a group of people had been arrested on suspicion of hurling anti-Semitic abuse from a convoy of cars in the St John’s Wood area of London, at the holy time of Shavuot when Jews commemorate the giving of the Ten Commandments. At least one of the cars was draped with the Palestinian flag. This is not the first time that international events have rebounded on the streets of Britain. Southall, for instance, in the 1990s experienced violence between young Sikhs and Muslims, because of events in India.

In all these instances, anger was present – the anger that comes when we feel powerless in the face of things that appear to us to be blatantly unjust or impossible to change.

Religions speak of it in different ways. I’ve spent much of my life teaching Buddhism and it has become part of me. Buddhists usually insist that anger is negative because it’s so closely linked to hatred. And hatred, according to Buddhism, is one of the roots of all that is negative and evil. Anger and hatred cloud our minds so that truth or reality cannot be seen clearly.

Christians, though, speak of righteous anger. The story of Jesus chasing from the temple in Jerusalem those who sought personal profit not prayer is often used to illustrate this. But Christianity also speaks of not letting the sun go down on our anger.

I was certainly hurt when ‘Burn in fire’ was shouted at me in Jamaica. But I knew enough about the history of slavery and white supremacy to see why these young men taunted me, a white woman in her twenties. It became part of my learning. I can also understand why Muslims are filled with anger at the deaths they see in Gaza and why Jews are similarly angry at those they see in Israel. But the anger that becomes hatred or retaliation is not the answer. It cannot nurture reconciliation, truth-telling or change. Change can only come if we seek to stand in the shoes of others, to see things from the other side. For as one Buddhist texts says - never here do hatreds cease by hatred. Only by freedom from hatred do they cease. This is a perennial or eternal truth.

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