Jealousy’s Destructiveness

The story of Yosef and his brothers is one of the most tragic stories in Jewish History. It was clearly part of a Divine plan that the Jewish people would go down to Egypt. But the circumstances that caused it, are most troubling.

The Mussar books speak of negative personality traits that need to be corrected. Such traits as arrogance, miserliness, anger, and lust, clearly need to be removed from one’s interaction with others. But it might be that jealousy is the worst trait of all.

The Rabbis spoke of different types of jealousy. Sometimes it can come from longing for a possession that a friend possesses. It might come from a feeling of inadequacy when looking at someone else’s success. But the worst type of jealousy is קנאה מחמת שנאה, jealousy that is motivated by hatred.

The Torah points out that Yosef’s brothers were jealous of him, and they hated him. This hatred was so great that the Alshich wrote that they did not feel any compassion for their father, when he was grieving for Yosef.

The correct thing to do is to distance ourselves from jealous people. Their negativity can really bring a person down. This is especially true of our relatives. We see the damage from Yosef’s brothers. It led to our enslavement for 210 years in Egypt. The saddest part of one who is consumed with jealousy, is that it takes away from him the ability to be content.

As long as one is fixated on another person, he will never be able to feel contentment. He is unable to count his own blessings because of his jealousy. A great deal of pain has come from jealousy throughout our history. It’s time we all learn to overcome it.