Rabbi Charles P. Sherman
Shabbat Pekuday
March 7, 2003
A Sure Sign of Maturity
Friends, our Bible is not always a peaceful book, filled with serenity, green pastures and brotherly love. The Bible holds up a mirror to life, reflecting its pains, its passions and its conflicts.
This Sabbath, we read the final chapters of the Book of Exodus. We discover that God ordered Moses to do something which must have been uncomfortable, if not even painful, for Moses. Moses was required to anoint the four sons of his brother Aaron, just as he had previously anointed Aaron. At this juncture, it appeared that all four of Aaron’s sons were destined to follow in the footsteps of their priestly father.
First of all, this was an unusual situation. The most common pattern was for a biblical hero to be the parent of just one distinguished child; the rest of his children were either wicked or of less consequence. For example, Abraham’s most notable son was Isaac; Isaac’s was Jacob; Jacob’s was Joseph; Joseph’s was Ephraim; and David’s was Solomon. But all four of Aaron’s sons were going to become priests like their father.
Furthermore, Moses himself had two sons – Gershom and Eliezer – and frankly both of them were non-entities. We clearly get the impression that Moses – the redeemer, law-giver and teacher – was too busy to devote much time to his own family. Moses was so preoccupied with communal affairs that he did not even bother to circumcise his son. We read that God intended to strike Moses because of his failure to circumcise the child, but Moses’ non-Jewish wife, Zipporah, saved the day by performing the circumcision herself.
There is hardly even a mention of Gershom and Eliezer in the Bible. Joshua, Moses’ eventual successor, was not one of Moses’ sons. Moses did not seem to derive much pleasure from his children, not the way Aaron was able to gain pleasure from his sons. And now Moses had to anoint his nephews, consecrate them as priests just as he had done for Aaron himself.
One of the ancient commentaries explains that Moses’ anointing Aaron’s sons was a strategy for dealing with Moses’ potential jealousy. Moses was not jealous of Aaron’s priestly status; Moses was the political leader, Aaron was the keeper of the sanctuary. But Moses might well have resented the fact that his own children were not appointed priests. I am sure Moses must have wanted the best for his children as we do today for ours. When our children are successful, we love to show them off. We expend huge quantities of psychic and physical energy to make sure that our children go to the best colleges. From the moment they are born, we crave the pleasure they can give us.
You know the story of an interfaith clergy panel which was gathered to discuss the topic “when does life begin?” The Catholic Priest said at conception; the Presbyterian minister said at birth; the Rabbi said life begins at graduation from medical school. Yes, we Jews want our children to be, in the words of Rabbi Harold Schulweis “nachas-producing machines.”
Therefore, we are sometimes jealous of our sibling’s children, our nieces and nephews, if they overshadow our own children. Often we engage in subtle competition with our brothers and sisters to see who has the best kids. We often do so unconsciously, or even consciously, with the children of our friends as well.
Sometimes we are even jealous of our own children, except on those occasions when they are extensions of us and bring glory and honor to us. A mother can derive pleasure from her daughter up to the point when she feels she is growing older and less attractive while her daughter is becoming increasingly more beautiful, and thus a threat. A father can take pride in his son when the son achieves something extraordinary until that time comes when the son performs better in some area than the father. Even husbands and wives are sometimes jealous of each other. Jealousy is a human tendency, but it is destructive to our physical, psychic and spiritual selves.
The ability to rejoice genuinely in the triumph of others is one of the chief qualities of a winner. In the book Born to Win, the authors observe: “Winners have a zest for life, enjoying work, play, food, other people, sex and the world of nature. Without guilt, they enjoy their own accomplishments. Without envy, they enjoy the accomplishments of others.”
One sure sign of maturity is the ability to derive profound joy from the achievements of other people for their own sake and not for the way they may make us look better. I am afraid that no one completely overcomes the feeling of jealousy, and yet its elimination is certainly a worthy goal toward which to work.
Envy is unrelated to what a person possesses; it does not depend on the status, the size of his home, the length of his car, the thickness of his investment portfolio. The Greek philosopher Diogenes lived in a tub and it was large enough for him. His contemporary, Alexander the Great, conquered the world and, before he died at the age of 33, he lamented that he had no more worlds to conquer. A tub was large enough for Diogenes, but the world was too small for Alexander the Great.
I recommend this antidote to envy. Pause occasionally and ask yourself how happy really is the person who possesses the object of our envy? That person may very well be tormented by his envy of someone else.
We might also draw up a list of the countless blessings which are already ours and that we habitually overlook and take for granted – health, our loved ones, food, shelter, freedom. Let one of these be threatened and we suddenly realize how fabulously rich we truly are.
Another way to resist the envy within all of us is to be aware of how expensive envy is. The envious person is an unhappy person. In fact, he is doubly unhappy – unhappy over what he lacks and unhappy over what his neighbor possesses; unhappy over his own troubles and unhappy over his neighbor’s’s triumphs.
Envy can be expensive in other ways too. When a very promising Post Office official was arrested recently and charged with staging a million dollar robbery at his own post office, a co-worker offered this explanation – “He always seemed to want more. No matter what he had, he seemed to want more.” As a rabbi in the Talmud warned, “he who focuses his attention on that which is not his is denied what he seeks and loses what he already has.”
Do you know the story about a woman of very limited income who envied the glamorous look of affluent women whom she saw in the street, in the shops, in the glamour magazines? So this woman began to save from her meager income and finally had enough to get the services of the most expensive beauty parlor in her city. She spent many hours there, and they gave her everything – “the works.”
When the woman emerged, she could hardly recognize herself, and she was extremely pleased. She could not wait until the evening for her husband to see her new glamourous self, so she phoned him at his place of business and said she had to see him now; it was important.
So she came up to his workplace and, when he looked at her, he exclaimed: “You look like a million!”. Highly flattered and radiant with joy, she asked: “Do you mean a million dollars?”. He said: “No, like a million others!”.
Becoming a mature person, free of envy, means developing such a high degree of self-esteem that we are not unsettled by those who own things which we cannot possess, by those who accomplish goals which we cannot achieve, or by those who are blessed with satisfactions which we have been denied. When we believe with conviction that we are truly worthy and invaluable human beings, in spite of our limitations, jealousy will no longer be a major component of our character.
There is a story about a middle-age man who was trying to impress a new woman friend with his life story. He said: “I was raised by lower-middle class parents who wanted me to excel at any cost. Because of their ambition for me, I’ve tried hard all my life to be number one in several areas, but I have not excelled in any of them. And now I have arrived at advanced middle-age.” Here he paused in the hope that the woman might say that he looked younger than his years. “And I am forced to admit that in the overall scheme of things I have not been a success. I can speak six languages, but only three of them fluently; I failed as a linguist. I’ve done numerous landscape paintings, but sold only about a dozen of them. Therefore, I’ve failed as an artist. I’ve worked for General Motors for ten years, and it is clear I’ll never go higher than a middle management position.”
Then he looked at the woman he was trying to impress expectantly, hoping to score points for his modesty. But the woman was not about to be manipulated; she was too smart for him. She replied: “We are coming at life from opposite ends. I was raised by parents who thought I was over-achieving when I stopped sucking my thumb. As a result, I speak only one language. I am no good at taking pictures, let alone painting them. I will probably never be anything more than a secretary. But none of that bothers me a bit, because I like myself.”
By anointing the sons of Aaron as priests, something that he could not do for his own sons, Moses began to learn this lesson of the need to like himself. Later in the Bible, we see how successfully it helped him to conquer his urge toward envy. Moses is considered to be the greatest prophet in the Bible. When Eldad and Medad, two young Israelites began acting as prophets within the camp, another youth ran to Moses saying: “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp!”.
Joshua turned to Moses and advised Moses to stop Eldad and Medad. Moses answered Joshua in a most magnanimous way. He said to Joshua: “Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all God’s people would be prophets and that God would put the divine spirit upon them.” Rather than wanting to silence Eldad and Medad, Moses – so at peace with himself – expressed the fervent hope that everyone, like him, could someday be a prophet.
Contrast Moses’ response with the attitude of Korach who led a bitter rebellion against Moses in the Book of Numbers? The sages attributed Korach’s rebellion to an all-consuming envy. According to rabbinic tradition, Korach was so extravagantly endowed with worldly goods that a folk expression grew describing an extremely wealthy person as being “as rich as Korach.”
But for all his wealth, Korach’s attention was focused not on what he had in such ample abundance, but on the one thing he lacked – the leadership of the people. It was his envy of Moses that prompted him to revolt, which ultimately led to his destruction.
Shakespeare called envy “the green sickness.” It is still very much with us and within us.
Let us learn from the example of Moses. If we can participate in the promotion of others and their children, and even rejoice with them in their success – that will be a sign of our maturity. Without guilt, may we enjoy our own accomplishments; without envy, may we enjoy the accomplishments of others. Amen
My colleagues Sidney Greenberg and Samuel M. Stahl contributed good ideas and words to this message. I rejoice in their ability to express what I want to say.
