The Terrible Price of Success
Coveting is one of the ugliest impulses in human nature. The Torah understood that long before modern psychology gave it a name. The Tenth Commandment says it plainly: Lo Tachmod “Thou shalt not covet.”
There is a reason that commandment made the list. Coveting is not simply envy or jealousy; it is something far more nefarious.
Envy is merely wishing you had what someone else had, like a luxury yacht, a private plane, or a villa in some exotic far away place.
Jealousy is simply fearing someone might steal someone of value from you.
But coveting, that’s a whole different being.
Coveting is a darker impulse than envy or jealousy for it entails, not only wanting what someone else has, but denying them it as well. And when coveting is directed at an entire people, it can become something far more sinister and dangerous than envy or jealousy.
Although Jews’ numbers are few, they have managed to make an outsized contribution to civilization. They have excelled in science, medicine, law, technology, business, literature, music, and the arts. They have produced Nobel laureates in numbers wildly disproportionate to their population.
And rather than simply acknowledge their achievements, the world has repeatedly found ways to turn Jewish success into an indictment of the Jews themselves.
When Jews were poor, they were despised for being a burden to the state. When they became successful, they were accused of being greedy and exploitive. When they entered professions, they were accused of denying opportunities to others. When they built businesses, their prosperity was attributed to cheating and duplicitous practices.
The false accusations keep changing, but the J’accuse Jews remains directed at the same defendant.
This is one of the great perversities of antisemitism. Jewish failure is used against them. Jewish success is used against them. Jewish poverty is used against them. Jewish prosperity is used against them. There is no condition in which the antisemite cannot manufacture a reason to hate Jews.
That is because the problem was never what Jews did. The problem was that Jews existed—and, despite everything thrown at them, they overcame, prevailed and succeeded.
Jews should not apologize for their achievements and successes. They should not minimize them. And they certainly should not allow anyone to persuade them that their accomplishments somehow require an apology.
The Torah warned humanity thousands of years ago about the corrosive power of coveting. History has repeatedly demonstrated what can happen when covetousness becomes resentment, resentment becomes hatred, and hatred hardens into ideology.
The Jewish people have paid a terrible price for their achievements. But they need not apologize for flourishing. Their disproportionate accomplishments across so many fields should be viewed not as a source of resentment, but as a positive example. As the prophet Isaiah declared, the Jewish people are called to be an or la-goyim—“a light unto the nations”—by living according to Jewish ethical principles and demonstrating how moral purpose can illuminate the wider world. Their achievements can remind us of what individuals, and humanity itself, can accomplish when talent, perseverance, and ethical responsibility are put to constructive use.
