There was once a king who met two people. One coveted everything he saw and wanted it for himself, the other was so jealous that he could not handle anyone having anything even if he himself possessed that very same similar item.
The king offered to grant one of the two fellows anything they requested but on one condition; whatever he got his friend would receive double. Understandably both had a hard time with this offer. The covetous person could not bear seeing someone else with double of what he had, and the jealous person did not want his friend to have anything, let alone double of what he had.
After a long argument the covetous person convinced the jealous person to choose. With overwhelming jealousy burning inside him the jealous person chose to have one of his eyes gouged out, so that his friend would lose both of his eyes.
One may say this story is extreme and a little inapplicable to the average man. But people suffer from jealousy so much that it causes them sleep deprivation. Don’t people try to keep up with the `Cohens` whilst putting themselves into debt which can lead to stomach ulcers and heart attacks? Their jealousy is just self defeating. As the Mishnah says ‘jealousy removes a person from this world’, it doesn’t just cause us to lose an eye it can kill us!
But we have to know that feelings of jealousy are part of the natural emotions of a human being. In this week’s Sedra Moses is told to anoint Aaron’s children ”just like he anointed Aaron”. The Meshech Chochma explains that Moses always knew that his own children would not take over the mantle of leadership, however with his brother Aaron this would not be the case and Aarons sons would inherit the status as Cohanim. This could have caused Moses to be jealous of his brother and when it would come to anointing the children there could have been a lack of enthusiasm. The command to anoint the sons of Aaron was not just a technical command to do the anointing of the children in a routine, procedural way. But rather this command was to tell Moses to anoint Aaron’s children with the same enthusiasm that Moses used when anointing Aaron himself and to dispel any feelings of jealousy.
So we can not be expected not to have any feelings of jealousy—even Moses had to be forewarned against such feelings. But we need to combat jealousy by strengthening our faith in G-d by realising that everything we have is destined for us and anything someone else has is destined by the Almighty for him.
Good Shabbos, Chaim