There Was a King in Jeshurun

“There was a king in Jeshurun, when the heads of the people gathered, all the tribes of Israel together.” Opening There is a question that hurts, and no one asks it out loud: Why does it hurt me when my friend succeeds? Not an enemy. A friend. Not a stranger. A brother in my community, a partner in my business, even my own husband or wife. His talent, his success, the praise he gets from others, and something inside me gives a little pinch. What is this pain? And how do we heal it? First Observation: Two Goals Let us begin with a simple but sharp distinction. There are two questions a person can ask himself. “Will I win?” Or: “Will the mission win?” When the answer at your core is the first one, another person’s talent is a direct threat. If I am the goal, then every bit of his greatness eats away at mine. But when the answer is the second one, another person’s talent is oxygen. Everything he brings moves forward what we both want. Here is the paradox. Talented people are often the ones most likely to push others away out of envy. It is not because they lack talent. It is because they have too much self, an inflated sense of “me.” Their “I” is big, and so it is also more delicate and easier to wound. Envy is not a sickness of the weak. It is a sickness of people who see themselves as the goal in and of themselves. The Core Idea: A King in Jeshurun This is what the Torah is saying: “There was a king in Jeshurun, when the heads of the people gathered, all the tribes of Israel together.” Jeshurun is a poetic name for the Jewish people. The order of this verse is puzzling. The simple order would be this: the leaders of the people gathered together, and then they appointed a king. But the verse turns the order around. First there was a king, and only then the heads of the people gathered together. The king comes first. The gathering flows from him. Why? Because without a king, the leaders of the people do not gather. They collide. Each of them is great. Each has power. Each has a role and a talent. Without a shared center, their greatness becomes a source of division. But then there is a king. That means a higher purpose that everyone bows to and serves. When there is one, those same leaders, each one unique, are able to gather together and act. The king in this verse does not erase the leaders of the people. Just the opposite. He is the one who makes it possible for them to work together. Reuben, leader of one tribe, has a talent, and it does not threaten Simeon, leader of another, because both of them serve the same kingdom. This is the new idea. When we set ourselves aside before Hashem as our King, our personal strengths are not wiped out. They are set free to work together. Going Deeper: From Self to Emissary The Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, explains that envy is one of the “bad character traits that are born from arrogance.” At its root, a person sees himself as the center. This is the point of the inflated self. It is not that he wishes his friend harm. It is that he cannot be happy about his friend’s good, because his friend’s good feels like something taken away from him. But when a person becomes an emissary, something deep changes. That means he defines himself by the mission, and not by his own honor. His friend’s talent becomes part of a shared basket. His joy in his friend’s success is no longer a heroic sacrifice of his pride. It is simple, real joy: “We won.” This is why the Tanya writes that the way to love every Jew is to see each Jew as “truly a part” of one whole. This is not a generous distance. It is real oneness. The root of envy is seeing the parts as rivals. The root of love is seeing the parts as completing each other. Our Sages teach: “Just as people’s faces are not alike, so their minds are not alike.” And that is exactly why each person brings what his friend does not bring, and together the mission is made whole.