One summer afternoon I was driving around Deal, looking at the homes, the cars, the people…and something occurred to me. It wasn’t an especially profound realization, but I don’t think I had ever really thought about this way. I realized that being part of our community is REALLY, REALLY HARD.
When I mentioned this in a class I gave a couple of days later, I could tell by the nods how many people agreed with me. And as though I needed additional confirmation, many people came up to me afterward and said, “Thank you for saying exactly what we all feel.”
Why is it so hard?
In our community, no matter how big a person’s house is, he feels it’s not big enough. No matter how much money a person has, he feels he doesn’t have enough. No matter how beautiful a girl is, she feels she’s not beautiful enough. No matter how thin a girl or woman is, she feels she’s not thin enough. People feel they need to be religious, but they feel they need to be “not too religious.” And the kids have to be a certain way, they have to get good grades, they have to go to the right schools.
In short, the pressure is ENORMOUS. It can be overwhelming. It can be overbearing.
“Hidden” Hatred
But we don’t have to feel this pressure.
Because the root and origin of this pressure is jealousy. Plain and simple.
A person should be able to feel happy with this house, with his car, with his family, with his income – no matter what other people are doing.
Actually, this is an explicit command in the Torah. And not only an explicit command – but one of the Aseret Ha’dibrot, the Ten Commandments pronounced to our ancestors at Sinai, as we read in Parashat Vaet’hanan: לא תחמוד – “You shall not covet.”
In plain English, this means we must not desire what other people have. We should be happy with what we have, and not feel pressured to have what other people have.
The importance of this concept can be seen in a mysterious passage in the Gemara, in Masechet Yoma. The Gemara says that when the first Bet Ha’mikdash was destroyed, it was known which sin caused the destruction, and so the time of its reconstruction was made known. But when the second Bet Ha’mikdash was destroyed, the sin that caused the destruction was not known, and so the time when it will be rebuilt is also not known.
This comment should startle all of us. Every child has learned the Gemara’s teaching (just one page earlier!) that the second Bet Ha’mikdash was destroyed because of שנאת חנם – petty hatred among Jews. This is elementary. It is the subject of countless speeches and classes in the summer, during the period of mourning for the Bet Ha’mikdash. How can the Gemara say that the reason is not known?
One commentator gave a very powerful answer. He reread the Gemara to mean that the sin for which the Bet Ha’mikdash was destroyed is concealed within people’s minds and hearts. Hatred is not always clearly manifest. Other sins are unmistakable – we see it with our eyes. But hatred can be subtle.
The Hafetz Haim taught that the root cause of hatred is jealousy. And this is why the sin of שנאת חנם is “concealed” – because it starts with a seemingly innocent mindset and attitude, one which many of us have. It’s the mindset of “Oh, look at so-and-so’s new home,” or, “Oh, look how well behaved her kids are,” or, “I heard they’re going on vacation for a third time this year.”
This is something so many of us do. It’s natural.
The reason why it’s natural is because it hurts – it really, really hurts when we see people who have what we don’t have, who enjoy a type of success that we don’t enjoy. And this is why שנאת חנם is so hard to eliminate – because it starts with these painful feelings of envy, this wish that the other fellow wouldn’t be quite so successful, quite so happy, quite so fortunate. This is the hidden “hatred” that gradually festers and grows into something bigger.
Jealousy in Action
Here are a few examples that demonstrate how this process works.
1) “How dare he learn Torah now!”
One evening I happened to be in somebody’s home where there was a young Rabbi sitting and learning Torah. My instinct was to think to myself, “Why is he learning now? He’s married with young children. Shouldn’t he be with his family?”
After about a minute or two, I caught myself. I realized that was a terrible thing to think.
I told myself, “Be honest, Joey. You’re not worried about this man’s wife and kids. You’re worried about yourself. When you saw him poring over a book, it made you uncomfortable. It made you wonder, ‘Why aren’t I learning so diligently?’ And so you defended your ego by looking at him critically.”
This is how jealousy can so easily morph into hatred. We see somebody who seems more accomplished, and it makes us feel insecure, and so we need to find a way to criticize or dislike that person so we feel better about ourselves.
2) A tale of two parking lots
In the summers I rent a house in Lakewood and then come to Deal for Shabbat and several times during the week to teach. I recall one summer day when, shortly after I had bought a new car, I came out of kollel in Lakewood where I was learning to get into my car. As I surveyed the cars lined up in the parking lot, I started feeling good about myself. My car looked pretty good in that lot compared to the cars of the Lakewood kollel community.
But then I drove to Deal, and parked in a parking lot – alongside a number of BMWs, Mercedes, Ferraris and Bentleys. Suddenly, I felt small, I felt uncomfortable.
It makes absolutely no sense. I still drove the same car, no matter what lot I parked in. But looking around at what other people have led me to compare myself, and this affected my self-esteem. And once our self-esteemed is damaged, we can easily resort to hostility and hatred in an effort to repair it.
3) Killing the baby
Many of us are familiar with the famous story of King Shlomo and the baby. Two women came before King Shlomo with a baby, each claiming that the baby was hers. Neither presented a more compelling case than the other, and so King Shlomo devised a plan. He ordered his servants to bring a sword and cut the baby into two, so each woman could take one half.
One woman immediately objected, and said she would rather retract her claim and allow the other woman to keep the baby, than allow the baby to be killed. The other woman, meanwhile, said that she would rather the baby be killed than see the other woman take the baby. King Shlomo right away determined that the first woman was the real mother, as she could not bear to watch the child be killed.
I always wondered about the second woman in this story. Kill the baby?!?!?! Really?!!? What would that have accomplished?
But if we think about it, this is precisely what jealousy does. It makes us want other people to fail, to lose, to accomplish less and to have less, so that we will feel better.
This woman desperately wanted a child. She just couldn’t bear the sight of her friend having what she wanted so badly but didn’t have. And so she would have rather had the baby killed so that she would not have to bear this pain.
Of course, none of us would go this far, to wish death upon an innocent baby. But this mindset is instinctive. It’s part of us. It hurts when we see people succeed in ways that we don’t. It makes us very, very uncomfortable. And this discomfort causes us to resent their successes, to wish they wouldn’t succeed. And it also causes us to compete, to try to outdo others. And this is precisely what שנאת חנם is.
So what do we do? How do we address this problem? What we can do to overcome this instinct to resent?
Creating the Mood
The way we do this is by creating a different kind of mood, a different kind of outlook; by spreading positivity instead of negativity; by not waiting until we get a good feeling, and instead GENERATING THAT FEELING WITHIN OURSELVES.
How is this done?
1) Smile!
The first strategy is very simple: smile.
A certain study was done that showed a link between people’s overall success…and the size of their smile in their yearbook picture. Another study looked at players’ pictures on baseball cards, and found that the players with larger smiles lived on average seven years longer than the others.
This might sound silly, but a smile is a powerful tool. A warm smile generates positivity. It creates a loving, upbeat mood. It spreads happiness. When a husband and wife smile at each other when they see each other after a long day, this can impact the entire evening, and the entire relationship.
Even if we don’t feel like smiling when we hear of somebody else’s good fortune, or when we see his new house or car, let’s try to smile anyway. This helps to block the instinctive negative feelings, and create the positive feelings that we want.
2) Say “WOW”!
A second strategy is something I learned from my daughter’s playgroup teacher.
The teacher sent the kids home with a piece of paper telling the following amazing story. A woman was walking in the playground and saw a little girl gleefully playing with a helium balloon. She was running, jumping and skipping with the balloon, having the time of her life. Then, suddenly, a gust of wind came, and blew the string attached to the balloon out of her hands.
The girl stood there, watching her balloon fly higher and higher, and further and further.
The woman, naturally, was expecting an outburst, a meltdown, a fit.
But instead, the girl exclaimed, “WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Her disappointment was overtaken by the wonder of the majestic sight of her balloon sailing into the heavens.
The woman watched in amazement. She went home, wrote this story, and decided that from then on, any time something disappointing happens, instead of complaining about it, she will exclaim, “Wow!” She will find something to marvel about, something to celebrate, something to be happy about.
WOW!! What a great idea!
Just imagine if every time we heard of somebody else’s promotion, or big business deal, we said, “Wow! That’s great!” Imagine if every time we heard of somebody who bought a new house or is expanding their house we said, “Wow! That’s great!” Imagine if every time we heard of a youngster in the community getting engaged, we said, “Wow, that’s great!”
Even if we have that uneasy feeling inside us, just saying those words can be so powerful. It can create a mood that will affect the way we feel about things.
3) Overpower the negativity!
We’ve all heard the famous story told in the Gemara of Bar-Kamtza, the man who, in a sense, is responsible for the destruction of the second Bet Ha’mikdash.
The story goes that a man who was making a party sent an invitation to his close friend, Kamtza, but the invitation mistakenly reached Bar-Kamtza, a man whom he despised.
When Bar-Kamtza received the invitation, he was pleasantly surprised, figuring that the host had decided to put an end to the hostility and start a new chapter. But when he showed up to the party, the host saw him, and was incensed. He angrily threw him out. Bar-Kamtza pleaded to be allowed to remain, and even offered to pay for the entire affair. But the host was adamant, and had his henchmen force Bar-Kamtza out of the building.
Bar-Kamtza decided to take revenge for the humiliation he suffered. He contacted the Roman authorities with a false claim that the Jews were planning a revolt, and concocted a scheme to prove it. This prompted the Roman government to send troops to raze the city of Jerusalem and burn down the Bet Ha’mikdash.
This is a very famous story, with many profound lessons for us to learn. But one thing that is often overlooked is the way the Gemara introduces this story: “It was because of Kamtza and Bar-Kamtza that Jerusalem was destroyed.” The Gemara appears to cast the blame for this calamity on both Kamtza and Bar-Kamtza.
We need to ask, what did Kamtza do? In the story, he did absolutely NOTHING!! He was just the fellow who was supposed to receive the invitation. Why is he blamed for the tragedy?
One commentator offers an enlightening answer: Kamtza is blamed because HE SHOULD HAVE GONE TO THE PARTY!!!
Kamtza was a close friend of the host. If he didn’t receive an invitation, he should have realized that there was some mistake, and he should have come anyway.
What did Kamtza do when the day of the party arrived and he did not receive an invitation? The Gemara doesn’t tell us, but it’s not hard to imagine what he was thinking. “No invitation? I thought we were friends! I guess he doesn’t value our friendship. I invited him to all my events, but he doesn’t reciprocate? This is a friend? I’m done! This friendship is OVER!”
He let hard feelings build within him – when he could have, and should have, done just the opposite.
If he would have gone to the party with a warm smile and a warm greeting to the host, he could have brought so much positive energy into what was a delicate, sticky situation. He could have spread so much love and friendship. Who knows if maybe this would have rubbed off on the host? Who knows if maybe he could have used this mistake as a great opportunity to create and spread positivity?
Kamtza could have overpowered the negativity through positivity. He could have taken his hard feelings and turned them around into feelings of warmth and friendship. But he didn’t.
Even if the other party is a bit cold or condescending, we can change the mood, the environment, and the relationship. Instead of letting the mood control us, we can control the mood. If we smile anyway, if we celebrate his or her successes even though we find the person to be a little arrogant, maybe he or she will be less arrogant. We are in the driver’s seat. We can eliminate the tension and hard feelings by making a point of creating warmth and positivity.
Creating Beautiful Moments
The famous legend is told of two brothers who lived on opposite sides of a mountain, and they shared a field, whose produce they divide equally between them. One brother lived alone, without a family, while the other was married with numerous children.
One night, the unmarried brother was thinking that they should not be dividing the grain equally. After all, he was just one person, and his brother had a large family to feed. His brother should receive a larger share. And so, in the middle of the night, this brother took one of his stacks of grain and brought it to his brother’s storehouse.
That same night, the other brother lay awake thinking that to the contrary, he should be receiving less. After all, he had a large family that brought him joy, while his brother lived alone. He should at least enjoy wealth. And so that brother took one of his stacks and, in the dark of night, brought it over to his brother’s side.
In the morning, each brother was startled to see that he had the same number of stacks as he had the previous day. They both didn’t understand what happened.
This repeated itself for several nights. Every night, each brother secretly brought a stack of his grain to the other’s storehouse, not realizing that the other brother was doing the same thing.
Finally, one night, as they were bringing their stacks of grain, they met. They immediately realized what was happening. They dropped the piles of grain, and warmly embraced one another. Legend has it that the Bet Ha’mikdash was built on that very spot, on the top of what is known as Har Ha’bayit, the Temple Mount.
Let us try to imagine what the feeling, the mood, must have been like at that moment. Let us try to imagine how much love, how much goodness, how much positivity, was felt when the brothers realized what was happening.
We can create such moments. We can generate this kind of positive energy.
When we feel jealousy, when we get that painful feeling of envy, we can fight it by forcing ourselves to smile, by forcing ourselves to exclaim, “That’s great!” We can overcome negative feelings by creating positive feelings – and when we do, those positive feelings will be contagious, and spread to everybody around us. But we cannot wait for these moments of positivity to happen by themselves. We need to create them by turning our feelings of jealousy into feelings of joy and excitement.
Seeing With One Eye
A young boy was once playing with his friends when somebody threw something that struck this boy’s eye. He underwent several painful surgeries, but, unfortunately, the doctors determined that the eye was permanently damaged. The boy would never be able to see with that eye again.
The doctors gently and lovingly broke the news to the boy, expecting him to burst out in tears.
Instead, he turned to them and said, “My father always told me that G-d gave us two eyes so we use one to see bad, and one to see good. Now I only have one eye, so I see only good.”
Let us try, as much as possible, to use just one eye – the optimistic eye, the eye that sees what is good. We will then be people who encourage, who inspire, who uplift, who spread goodness and kindness all around. And we will not only start viewing other people differently, feeling genuinely happy for them, but, perhaps even more importantly, we will start viewing ourselves differently, feeling good about who we are, about our lives, and about our world.