" Jealousy,
lust and the [pursuit of] honor remove a person from the world.” (Pirkei Avot
4:21)
I don’t anticipate much
resistance to the claim that we all talk incessantly about our
lives. But I don’t expect such ease of acceptance when I posit that
our lives talk a lot about us too. In fact, everything that happens to us is
actually our lives talking back. Some call it karma; in Judaism we
call it middah kneged middah, meaning measure-for-measure, a
precise spiritual retribution that manifests itself in the physical realm.
However, seeing that there is nary a prophet among us, we can’t always really
know why certain events happen to us. But that doesn’t mean we can’t engage in
introspection or seek council from learned rabbis. And so, when I was informed
by the superintendent in my building that my entire bookshelf collapsed while I
was out of town, my heart sunk. I felt as if my life was talking to me, for
those bookshelves were not hosting romances and intrigue novels, but all my
holy Jewish books. Odd, from all the things that could go wrong in an apartment
left unattended for so long--plumbing, leaks, infestations--that was the only
thing wrong. My first instinct, being the self-recriminator that I am and
finding this out just after Yom Kippur, was to ask, “What have I done
wrong?” My own search populated too many answers and too many
excuses, so I decided to turn to one of the many rabbis I admire.
Here was his answer:
“There’s a lot to be said regarding such holy books that fall. For one, is
anyone really using them or have they become a furniture piece? And second, are
we following all the things we know about which are stated in them? One way or
the other, the Torah doesn’t fall unless HaShem
is allowing it to happen in order to get a person to do teshuva.”
The rabbi was right. For
one, since my mother became sick and her wellbeing became my priority, my books
had become “furniture.” I hadn’t lost faith, but I lost energy. Her sickness
knocked the wind out of me perhaps making room for an upgraded spirit. Prior to
her illness, I had been writing blogs about the weekly Torah portion since my
university days where they were often published in the Chabad newspaper and
later online. Perhaps they helped no one--I pray they did--but they
always refined me. So undoubtedly, my books, my sources of inspiration and I
missed each other. And so, if my hand was not reaching for them as in days gone
by, then by God’s mercy, they had reached out to me.
When I returned home to a
restored bookshelf and books which looked none the worse for scare, I was
relieved that all were intact and undamaged--except for one. The very book that
inspired me to begin writing over 30 years ago, one I had received as a gift
and never looked at until years later. I remember a line from the movie The
Hurricane which I saw a long time ago wherein one of the main
characters says, “You don’t find books, they find you.” After being found by
this book, I always felt it to be true.
I was grateful that the only
injury my book sustained was that the hard cover separated from its spine. The
pages were very soft and almost unmanageable like melted butter in my hands.
The name of the book: The Call of the Torah. My life wasn’t just
talking—it was calling. For the next few Shabbats I read the Torah
portion from that book always intending to fix it, but somehow as the week
passed, I kept forgetting until the next Shabbat when it melted in my hands
once again. (It cannot be repaired on Shabbat.) Then one day, abruptly out
of nowhere, with no chain of events to give it cause, I developed an
excruciating backache that kept me in bed for days and had me walking with a
seriously humbling posture. I had a strong feeling I knew the
source. Immediately I contacted a Torah scribe I know and asked if
any glue was permissible to fix my book, or if it had to be kosher. I fixed the
book and within a day my own spine too was better. Following that, I
began to write my Torah blogs again.
Yes, I believe my books were
talking to me. God gave me a talent to use in His service and to squander that
talent is to defy God and the faith He has in me. And the same goes for you and
your talents. Every morning upon waking, before taking a single step out of
bed, we say a prayer to God thanking Him for restoring our souls and for having
great faith in us. So please make no mistake, I’m not posturing myself as a
chosen one, we are all chosen, you with your strengths and me with mine. And in
today’s times, where antisemitism is rampant, and Jews are abandoning Torah
like a ship going under--not realizing that its teachings are the very life
vests themselves--I heard the call of the Torah as clear as the horn that will
sound with the coming of the Messiah.
So, this will be my third
blog after a long hiatus and that is why I am having such a hard time getting
to the point. Satan knows that permanence is established when an event repeats
itself three times. That is why I am well over 900 words and I have not yet
told you what this article is all about. It’s about jealousy. It’s about all of
us trying to be what we are not because we are jealous of others. We try to
live “their” lives instead of our own. By feigning such postures we become like
failed Queen Esthers who flout our opportunities and decide not to use
everything God gave us to fulfill our own purpose and His will, and so we
perish.[i]
Maybe we don’t literally
drop dead on the spot, and maybe we will, God forbid, but we in essence kill
off who we are as unique souls with unique missions. We are so busy with
identity theft in the sense that we want to live the lives of others, look like
another, walk and talk like them, dress like them, spend like them, that we
become impostors, when our real very special selves are being smothered to
death. In effect, we are really committing suicide and like aliens assuming
others' identities. But make no mistake about it. We will always be the cheap
wannabee knock off. All the while we feign living their life, thinking we’re living
the “high life,” when in fact we are just a “lowlife”; for coveting is the
biggest sin of all the Ten Commandments because it leads to the violation of
all the others. If you envy you will eventually lie, cheat, steal, kill, betray,
etc....
The rabbis
teach that the only thing we are allowed to envy in another is their knowledge
of Torah. Every other thing they have is uniquely theirs by Divine design. To
covet is your way of telling God He doesn’t know what He’s doing? And I take it
you know better. Certainly you have your long list of why you are more
deserving of having that which you covet. Your smarter, better looking, nicer,
know what to do with it, need it more, etc. I promise you that getting
what you covet can often be a curse. As they say, "Be careful what you wish for." Your envious eye glamorizes the objects of your desire. You covet your neighbor
because your view is framed by ignorance. Know his full lot, understand his
full package and you may soon find yourself pitying your neighbor instead. But
most importantly, just mind your own business and be busy being you.
Jealousy/coveting never ends
well. In fact, the Talmud teaches, “That anyone who places his eyes on that
which is not his is not given what he desires, and that which he had is taken
from him.” The rabbis teach that upon creation, the moon was envious
of the sun and questioned why the sky needed two great luminaries, and so God
diminished the light of the moon; Cain envied Abel’s sacrifice to God and as a
result he was cursed by God; the primordial snake which once talked and walked,
envied Adam’s relationship with Eve, with the result that God punished him and
made him crawl the earth, eat dirt and caused hatred between him and the woman;
Korach, Moses’s cousin, envied Moses and Aharon and struck up a rebellion; the
earth opened and swallowed him. And make no mistake about it, the moon, Cain, the
snake and Korach each had tremendous potential and talents and each had great
destinies of their own if they would have been busy being the best versions of
themselves instead of trying to be someone else.
Green is not a flattering
color for a complexion and jealousy is plain out unhealthy: You eat yourself up
alive in this life and it "rots your bones" in the next, says The Book of
Proverbs.
Put your ear to YOUR life
and hear your own calling. When you do you will find that you have
less to grumble about regarding your life and your life will only have words of
praise to say about you. Keep in mind that upon judgment day we will not be
asked why we weren’t as good as Moses, or Abraham or Isaac (or your neighbor)
but rather we will be asked, “Why weren’t you as good as YOU could have been?” Enough with identity theft! It will be
pretty sad when one day your own life story will be played before your eyes and
you are not even in it.
~~~
~~~
[i]
“For if you remain silent at this time, relief and
rescue will arise for the Jews from elsewhere, and you and your father's
household will perish….” (Book of Esther 4:14)
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