GC#69 - Jealous Guy - a podcast by Amram Landau

They say that when Oscar Wilde heard an intelligent comment uttered by James Whistler (although I have heard it the other way too), he sighed and said, 'I wish I had said that'. To which Whistler replied (Or Wilde, depending on the version!) - 'You will, Oscar. You will!'

Isn't it annoying when you feel that you should have had something and you see someone else with it? A new car, a new contract, or even a good original joke...

...or the Torah. I mean, they were all offered it. I heard once that rather than us being the 'chosen nation', we should be called the 'choosing nation' - as the others had equal opportunities to accept it. Here we find the root of why Har Sinai got its name - a real hatred came into the world. A hatred and a jealousy.

Even the roots of the two words are similar - שנא and קנא - possibly the letter difference (200 in number alludes to the Talmudic dictum that 'he who has 100, wants 200') even points to the correlation between these two, which are also, it turns out, intertwined with love - see Dovid's relationship with Yonasan and Shaul. Very complicated indeed. Or Yosef and his brothers. The words 'hate' and 'envy' are constantly being employed - all because a third party had been displaying an apparent biased love.

What is the psychology behind this? Is it just human nature? And what can we take from this into our lives?

Further episodes of Reb L's G-dcast

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