At Avot 4:28 Rabbi Elazar HaKappar issues a stern warning: “Jealousy, desire and honour remove a person from the world”. Most traditional commentators on Avot add little to this warning since it largely speaks for itself, but the more recent trend is to frame it within the context of modern life. An example of this trend which I recently came upon is found in Rabbi Dan Roth’s Relevance: Pirkei Avos for the Twenty-First Century, a book on which I shall have more to say in a later post. Referring to this teaching, Rabbi Roth opens with the following passage:
A number of years ago, a woman in my shul was diagnosed with leukemia.
She was pregnant at the time, and in order to increase her chances of survival,
she was forced to undergo an abortion. Even after the abortion, she remained in
critical condition.
After she had recovered, her husband went to share the good news with
Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, who had been involved with the family throughout the
illness. He mentioned to Reb Chaim that he and his wife intended to make a seudas
hoda’a [a thanksgiving meal]. Reb Chaim advised them against it.
“Take the money you were going to use for the seuda”, said Reb
Chaim, “and distribute it amongst the needy. And then, instead of making a large seuda
for many people, make one only for your children. People today find it hard to
rejoice in other people’s good fortune, and by making a large commotion you
will just be bringing an ayin hara [evil eye] upon yourselves”.
Reb Chaim’s comment is a sad reflection on our generation, underscoring
our inability to share in other people’s joy and truly revel in their
happiness. This inability is the root cause of jealousy. If it is difficult for
people to wholeheartedly celebrate with a woman who has just recovered from a
potentially fatal illness, how much more so are people hard-pressed to feel
genuinely happy when they see neighbors building an addition onto their homes
or driving a new car. Unfortunately, far too often we resent them and the good
things in their lives.
I wonder if
I am alone in finding this passage difficult.
The first
thing that struck me was that anyone might be jealous of the husband in the
first place. While he was plainly both grateful and relieved that his wife
recovered from her leukaemia, the fact remains that they had both tragically
lost their unborn child. Where a person is threatened with the loss of two
precious assets but in the event loses only one of them, would this really
generate jealousy in others? On the other hand, the real source of any jealousy
may not be the wife’s recovery but the fact that the family might be viewed as
having received a greater degree of divine attention than that enjoyed by
others.
Secondly,
while I should never wish to comment critically on the words of a great contemporary
Torah sage without first seeking to understand the wider context in which those
words were spoken, I find it hard to accept that Rabbi Kanievsky should make a
broad generalisation to the effect that people today find it hard to rejoice in
other people’s good fortune. On a
personal level, that has not been my experience of the normal reaction of my
fellow Jews who have been invited to share the celebration of another’s good
fortune. More to the point, Avot also teaches the importance of judging others
in a favourable light (Avot 1:6). That teaching is phrased in the singular,
suggesting that it is primarily addressed to the way we view fellow humans as
individuals, but I do not believe that it precludes us from taking the same non-judgemental
stance with regard to pluralities such as communities as a whole.
It may be
that the proposed seudas hoda’a was likely to be on a scale of
ostentation that would have been offensive or inappropriate. If this were so,
the suggestion that it be restricted to close family members might be
constructive and indeed desirable, but the rabbi would surely have been able to
make it without casting the credentials of other potential invitees in a pejorative
light.
I am therefore
hesitant to take this story at face value and invite readers’ comments in the
hope of enlightenment.
