The mishnah (Avot 4:24), taught by Shmuel HaKatan (“Samuel
the Small”), reads thus:
בִּנְפֹל
אֹיִבְךָ אַל תִּשְׂמָח, וּבִכָּשְׁלוֹ אַל יָגֵל לִבֶּֽךָ, פֶּן יִרְאֶה יְיָ
וְרַע בְּעֵינָיו, וְהֵשִׁיב מֵעָלָיו אַפּוֹ
When your enemy falls, do not
rejoice; when he stumbles, don’t let your heart be gladdened—in case God sees and
it will be displeasing in His eyes, and He will turn His wrath from him [to
you]"
This teaching is centuries older than the era of the compiling
of the Mishnah, since it is cut-and-pasted straight from the Book of Proverbs
(Mishlei 24:17-18). One would have thought that everything that needed to be
said about it would be found in the commentaries on the Tanach, but this is
manifestly not so.
An ongoing issue presents itself for solution: when and how
to rationalize the onset of a feeling of happiness, so as to know when to maximize
it and when to keep it under control. We are hard-wired to be happy when things
work out for us, regardless of whether our good fortune is at another’s expense,
but our Sages—taking their lead from the author of the Book of Proverbs—challenge
us to examine and evaluate its cause.
The easy way out is to remind ourselves that everything that
happens to us, whether we perceive it as good or bad, is the product of God’s hashgachah
peratit, His personal supervision of our lives on earth. When something
happens to us that makes us happy, we should then give Him our grateful praise.
In general the situation is more nuanced when we were
expecting something bad to happen to us through our own fault, and that bad
outcome was to be delivered through the agency of an enemy. This expected
outcome is however averted. We are happy, but our consciences may be telling us
that this happiness is somehow undeserved. In this situation, our mishnah invites
us to ask how deserving we really are.
Next, i if our happiness corresponds to the downfall of our
foe, rather than merely to being saved, we should be careful: praise of God while
suppressing our jubilation may be the only appropriate response, especially if
that foe is down but not out and may therefore rise again. Ultimately, as our
mishnah, indicates, we should pause to recollect the possibility that God,
displeased at our unworthy rejoicing, may turn His wrath from our worsted
enemies, restore their previous fortunes and direct His anger towards us
instead.
Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Ferber, in Sichot Tzvi—his commentary
on Tefillah—cites the verse from Proverbs in the course of his explanation of the
final two verses from one of the Tehillim that we recite in the Shabbat and Yom
Tov pesukei dezimra:
תְּמוֹתֵת
רָשָׁע רָעָה וְשֹׂנְאֵי צַדִּיק יֶאְשָׁמוּ
פֹּדֶה יְהוָה
נֶפֶשׁ עֲבָדָיו וְלֹא יֶאְשְׁמוּ כָּל-הַחֹסִים בּוֹ
Evil shall kill the wicked; and
they that hate the righteous shall be held guilty.
God redeems the soul of His
servants; and none of them that take refuge in Him shall be desolate (Psalms
34:22-23).
The crucial point here is that evil kills the wicked, who
are taken to be our enemies. Once they are dead, they are not in a position to
have their fortunes restored at our expense as a consequence of our jubilation,
so we can rejoice to our hearts’ content. And it is on the basis of this logic
that the Children of Yisrael were entitled to celebrate the drowning of the
Egyptians in the Reed Sea by singing Shira.
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