Once when I was hiking up a jagged canyon wall, I encountered a rattlesnake on a ledge about three inches away from my right hand. I knew it as soon as I heard the telltale noise he emitted as a warning.

We both froze and stared at each other for what seemed like hours. My partner had gone on ahead and didn't realize the predicament I was in. I was too afraid to move, too fearful to call out, so I just waited and prayed until the snake finally slithered away into a crevice in the mountain wall. For years I avoided snakeskin shoes and shivered whenever I heard a tambourine.

In retrospect, I think that rattler was actually a very decent fellow. He warned me up front that he was angry because I had invaded his territory, gave me time to react, and, when I left him alone, departed without venting his poison. Come to think of it, I wish I had more friends like that.

It is clear from the vast volumes of self-help books on the market that the ways in which we express our feelings, especially our anger, is a topic of interest and concern for many of us today. Yet how we deal with those feelings and the choices we make because of them have concerned us since the beginning of time.

The Book of Genesis teaches us many things about human nature, feelings, and relationships, especially relationships between family members. The family is the natural breeding ground for the most intimate of emotions: Within the family, love, resentment, anger, fear, jealousy, and disappointment have ample room to germinate and grow. The family is also the primary teacher, where we learn how to express, harness, and channel our feelings so we can ideally build a home grounded in "shalom bayit," a nurturing home filled with love and peace.

One of the best examples of how jealousy between siblings destroyed a family is the story of Cain and Abel, which illustrates the crucial need to distinguish between the right to have feelings and the right to act on them.

Like Cain, whose offering to God was rejected while his brother's was warmly received, we have the right to feel hurt when the people we love don't appreciate us. Like Cain, we are entitled to feel resentment, jealousy, and rage when we try to do our best but our best never seems good enough for our parents, teachers, or friends.

But what we learn from this tragic story is that while our feelings may be legitimate and necessary to express, the right to act on our feelings must be surmounted when our actions will hurt or destroy others. Simply put, how we feel and how we act must be guided by different impulses.

In Genesis 4:6-7, God counseled Cain: "Surely, if you do right, there is uplift, but if you do not do right, sin crouches at the door; its urge is toward you but you can be its master."

Unlike the rattlesnake, who has only the impulses of flight or fight to guide him, we are faced with the challenge and the choice – to determine if we will let our feelings control us or if we will control our feelings. We are endowed with moral autonomy and conscious will, with the ability to decide wisely and consciously. It is a gift that permits us to master our impulses rather than be mastered by them, and in doing so, to become more human in the process.

It is deeply human to have feelings of jealousy, anger, and rage. But it is also deeply human to acknowledge these feelings, examine them against the values we hold sacred, and decide how to act based on the type of person we want to become. It is the mastery of our feelings, not the submission to them, that makes us truly human.

The sages of the Talmud put it most succinctly when they asked: "Who is a hero? He who conquers his own urges."