The men of the Torah overflow with feeling. Jacob and his son Joseph are recorded as having openly wept. In Joseph’s case, “his sobs were so loud” that his entire palace heard him wail. King David, a ferocious warrior, would pour out his soul to God in pages of Tehillim- poetry and at one point in battle, “David and the troops with him broke into tears, until they had no strength left for weeping.”

But men don’t brim with emotion as easily today. We’re told they’re not really wired for it.

Women on the other hand are no strangers to hearing how emotional they are. It’s a widespread, accepted belief that women are more sensitive, irrational, and “extra” when it comes to feelings. Men are considered the clear-headed, logical thinkers.

Turns out, it’s not true.

Studies show that men and women bear the same range of emotions and experience similar highs and lows. Contrary to women though, men are just not as expressive.

The study, carried out in 2021 by Dr. Adriene Beltz, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, found that while there are factors that can influence emotional responses in women, namely hormones- “daily emotion fluctuates to similar extents in men and women.”

These findings were groundbreaking, finally putting a dangerous, inaccurate stereotype to rest. Often women have been treated as if their natural emotions and reactions are exaggerated, unreasonable, even hysterical.

Not only does this approach undermine healthy expression of emotion but it also gives emotions a negative association- one of weakness and lack of control.

This doesn’t just effect women though, men too are deeply impacted. We see now that men are just as emotional as women, which makes sense being that men are also human beings. But for so long, men have been programmed to suppress perfectly healthy responses to life’s ups and downs.

From a young age, many of us are told that emotions are gendered. Women are emotional, men are not. Crying is for girls, not for boys. It’s no surprise then that when given no guidance on how to express, delve into and react to heavy feelings, men shut down.

And the consequences are grave:

Men’s inability to communicate in a marriage is one of the leading causes of divorce. Men are also more likely than women to turn to drugs and alcohol to cope with struggles. Most tragically, men are 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide. These heartbreaking statistics are just further proof that men do indeed feel deeply, but don’t have proper outlets or forms of release.

It’s almost as if society hasn’t allowed men to feel and to their own detriment.

Judaism compels men to feel.

Men are told not only to perform commandments but to experience them with deep feeling. In today’s society, men are taught to do, prove and accomplish, but not to feel.

In this Messianic Era, we await a time when the classic associations of masculinity fade away and men will “beat their swords into plowshares,” finally embracing their inner self.