Envy: when someone else's success becomes an inner pain

Source: Voices from the tradition: envy as a mental and physical illness

"Envy is the tendency to view the well-being of another with anxiety, even though it does not diminish our own." (Immanuel Kant)

"It is written, 'and envy is the rotting of the bones' — anyone who has envy in his heart, his bones rot; anyone who has no envy in his heart, his bones do not rot." (Shabbat 152b; based on Proverbs 14:30)

(Image: The Catacombs of Paris)

Explanation: Self-destruction: when envy becomes a pathology

Kant identifies envy as an irrational emotion: it adds nothing to me, it only seeks to destroy the other person's good fortune. The Sages (commenting on the words of King Solomon) take this a step further and define it as a physical pathology—envy does not remain in the soul, it penetrates into the bones, producing "rotting."

Perspective: Beyond reason: the true cost of longing for someone else's skeleton

Kant pinned great hopes on reason, but even he knew there are impulses that reason, with all its power and explanations, cannot rescue us from. Nobody buys a Ferrari just to get to work faster; you buy a Ferrari so that the driver sitting in the Toyota next to you in traffic swallows hard. Behind the imagery of the Talmud lies biology: envy devours its host whole, the bones rot because the skeleton is crumbling. That is the price paid by someone who longs for their fellow's skeleton instead of valuing their own.

Going Deeper: The science of pain: envy as a brain injury

Studies in neuroeconomics show that watching the success of our peers activates the anterior cingulate cortex, the very region of the brain that processes physical pain. Envy is a brain injury demanding a "cure" in the form of the other's downfall. In Yiddish, they mock the envious person who says: Zol mir oysgeshtokhn vern eyn oyg, abi dem shokhn beyde (May one of my eyes be gouged out, as long as my neighbor loses two). And in the midrash Yalkut Shimoni (Proverbs §953), a story is told of an argument between a miser and an envious person, where neither can bear to see the other receive more than him. The solution becomes—who will suffer more.

Culture: Slaves to envy: Berry Sakharof on the endless competition

Berry Sakharof, one of Israel's greatest artists, wrote the following lines in his song "Slaves" (Nega'ot, 1998):

Pretty storefront windows here / It's all for sale / We are hanging too / With exchange tags / So what will we do with this anger / What will become of the envy / Everyone wants to be free / But from what, my God, from what.

The song is preoccupied with slavery, and unlike those who sat by the rivers of Babylon and wept for ruined Zion, we are enslaved by our addictions, by the manipulations of advertisers and politicians, and also by our envy, fed by endless competition and the rat race for fame and pleasure.