Jealousy rarely begins with wanting what a billionaire or celebrity has. It usually begins much closer to home: the neighbor’s house, the coworker’s raise, the friend whose child made the prestigious match, or even the sibling who received slightly more grape juice at the Shabbat table.
That was the subject Rabbi Yitzchak Aminov and Rabbi Joey Haber confronted at a July 30 program at Kol Israel in Jamaica Estates presented by Chazaq, Milana’s Private Events, and Jewish Kiruv Movement. Before a packed audience, the two rabbis addressed “Why Not Me? The Poison of Jealousy” from different angles, offering practical ways to stop allowing someone else’s blessings to diminish our own.
Rabbi Aminov began with that familiar Shabbat table scene. Pour one child a little more grape juice than another, he observed, and the reaction can be immediate: Why does he have more?
Jealousy begins young because comparison comes naturally. The challenge is not pretending the feeling does not exist, but understanding what it can do to a person.
Rabbi Aminov noted that lo sachmod, the prohibition against coveting what belongs to another, appears among the Aseres HaDibros. He then cited Shlomo HaMelech’s description of jealousy as something that causes the bones to rot and offered an explanation with immediate relevance.
A person may be doing well until he discovers that someone comparable to him is doing better. Nothing about his own accomplishment has changed, yet suddenly it feels smaller. What satisfied him yesterday no longer seems impressive today.
Rabbi Aminov experienced that himself as a young yeshivah student. He entered at a beginning level, worked hard, and rose near the top of his class. Then another student arrived with a stronger background and quickly attracted the rebbi’s attention.
Rabbi Aminov admitted that he became jealous. The surprising result was not that he fell from first place to second. His own performance deteriorated further.
The other student had not taken away his ability. Rabbi Aminov had stopped concentrating on developing his own strengths because he was watching someone else.
That also explains why jealousy is often strongest among people who appear to be our peers. Most people are not tormented because a professional athlete has greater talent or one of the world’s wealthiest people has more money. They seem to occupy another league. The neighbor with the new car, the coworker who received the promotion, or the friend whose children appear to be thriving can hurt much more because the comparison seems plausible.
Rabbi Aminov, citing the Ramchal, offered a striking response: “No one is in your league.”
Each person was given a different mission, circumstances, abilities, and challenges. Another person’s success therefore says nothing about whether you are succeeding at yours.
Rabbi Aminov suggested beginning each morning with a simple exercise. Before reaching for the phone, ask: What has Hashem already given me today that someone else would love to have?
Health, a spouse, children, parents, the ability to learn or daven, and opportunities that have become so familiar that they are barely noticed can all disappear from consciousness when attention shifts toward what someone else possesses.
“The more we notice our blessings,” he said, “the less attractive someone else’s are.”
Rabbi Haber focused on another form of the same problem: spending life waiting for life to begin.
He recalled sitting with high school seniors who could not wait to graduate and then tracing what would likely happen next. First they would wait for school to end. Then summer would feel too long because they were eager for yeshivah or college. Once there, they would wait to settle in, come home, graduate, begin working, earn more money, start dating, become engaged, marry, have children, get the baby to sleep through the night, get the children into the right schools, marry them off, and eventually see grandchildren.
Every long-awaited destination comes with another destination attached.
A person can spend decades saying, “I can’t wait until,” only to discover that the finish line keeps moving.
Rabbi Haber later repeated those same stages, but from the opposite perspective. Senior year is the last chance to enjoy high school. A year learning Torah in Eretz Yisrael may become one of the freest and most formative years of a person’s life. A first paycheck means someone valued his work enough to pay for it. Dating offers the possibility of finding a spouse. Waking at 3 a.m. means there is a baby who needs you.
Even challenges with children can be viewed differently. A struggling child gives a parent the chance to sit beside him, guide him, and become the parent that child needs. Decades later, even waiting for difficult medical results with a spouse can contain something precious: two people who have spent 40 or 50 years facing life together and will face this together as well.
The circumstances did not change between Rabbi Haber’s two versions. The way they were seen did.
That is why, he argued, happiness cannot remain a destination. If happiness begins only when the current difficulty disappears, another reason to postpone it will always follow.
Rabbi Haber then recalled an experience with an eighth-grade girls’ class. He asked each student to name something about herself she wanted to change, expecting answers involving anger, behavior, or religious growth.
Instead, one disliked her nose. Another wanted different hair. Another thought she was too short.
He realized that before discussing self-improvement, he had to address something more basic: They did not appreciate themselves.
Rabbi Haber asked them to name the world’s most famous painting. They answered the Mona Lisa. Whatever an ordinary person may see when looking at the painting, he told them, its value reflects the greatness of the artist who created it. If someone cannot recognize its beauty, the deficiency may be in the observer’s understanding of art rather than in the painting.
A human being, he told the students, was created by Hashem. Failing to recognize one’s own value does not mean that value is absent.
Rabbi Haber then turned to the Torah’s description of Avraham Avinu: Hashem blessed Avraham bakol, with everything. Citing the Ramban, Rabbi Haber presented bakol as more than a tally of possessions. It represented an outlook on life.
Avraham’s life had hardly been free of hardship. He endured famine, war, separation from family, years without a child, the Akeidah, and the death of Sarah. How could such a life be described as having everything?
Because “everything,” Rabbi Haber explained, does not mean the absence of difficulty. It means recognizing that the blessings, limitations, responsibilities, disappointments, and tests in a person’s life all have a place in shaping who that person is meant to become.
That is different from resignation. The message is not, “I wish my circumstances were different, but I will tolerate them.” It is to ask what this particular circumstance demands, teaches, or makes possible.
Comparison makes that perspective especially difficult because we rarely compare two complete lives.
Rabbi Haber illustrated the problem with a trip to Sedona, Arizona. Before traveling, he saw images of Devil’s Bridge, a spectacular rock formation that appeared to offer a solitary encounter with nature. After a lengthy climb, he reached the site and found a large crowd and a long line of people waiting for their turn to walk onto the formation and take a photograph.
The photograph showing one person alone against the mountains was real. It simply left out everything standing a few feet beyond the frame.
That, Rabbi Haber said, is often how we see other people. We notice the house, vacation, marriage, children, business, or social standing that fits neatly into view. We do not see the frustrations, fears, disappointments, and struggles outside the picture.
We then compare the complete version of our own lives to the portion of somebody else’s life that is visible.
Rabbi Haber described applying the same lesson during a difficult period of his own, when criticism arose surrounding a project he believed was helping people. For some time, his focus was on getting the problem resolved. Then, during a walk to shul one Shabbos morning, he changed the question. Instead of asking how quickly the situation could disappear, he asked what Hashem might want him to gain from having to confront it.
By the time he reached shul, he had identified several ways the experience could help him grow.
The problem remained. Its role in his life looked different.
Rabbi Haber connected that outlook through the Avos. Avraham is described with bakol. Yitzchak later says he ate mikol. Yaakov tells Eisav, yesh li kol, “I have everything.” The three words are joined in Birkat HaMazon, where we ask to be blessed as Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov were blessed, bakol, mikol, kol.
The inheritance, Rabbi Haber explained, is not simply having more. It is learning to recognize one’s portion as complete.
Rabbi Aminov described that task as watering your own grass instead of staring at someone else’s. Rabbi Haber added another dimension: Even the difficult patch may have a purpose. It may demand growth, responsibility, strength, or closeness to Hashem that an easier life would never have required.
Together, their messages offered an answer to the evening’s question.
“Why not me?” begins by looking at somebody else.
A better question is: Why did Hashem give this to me, and what am I supposed to do with it?
The first question turns another person’s blessings into a reason for dissatisfaction.
The second brings us back to our own life, our own mission, and our own bakol.
By Shabsie Saphirstein
Why Not Me? Rabbi Joey Haber And Rabbi Yitzchak Aminov Confront The Poison Of Jealousy
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