Vitiation of Morality

The Gemorah in Sanhedrin 102a tells of a moment when Yerabam ben Nebat was grabbed by the robe by G-d and told - "Do you turn back in teshuva, and I, you, and the son of Yishai (ie. David) will stroll together in the Garden of Eden?" Yirabam asks - "Who will go first?" And G-d says, "The son of Yishai." And to this Yerabam says no thanks.

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Irving Bunim applies this tale to the mishna which states that "Jealousy, desire, and honor remove a person from the world." He cites Avot DeRabi Natan which specifies that the world these traits takes a person from is The World To Come. Bunim puts it this way in his Ethics From Sinai Vol II - page 194: "If the twisted, morally vitiated inner self cannot live in this world but will be removed, no more will it be able to live in the Hereafter, where it will arrive quite intact and unaltered."*1

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Rav Chaim Schmuelevitz noticed something curious in this Gemorah. When G-d makes His offer He says "I, you, and the son of Yishai will walk together." The answer to Yerabam's question was covered, clearly Yerabam came before David. But Yerabam's insecurity made him need to hear it again and that caused lose him to his place.

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I'm presently thinking about jealousy and desire and honor. These are enemies that mix together inside us and threaten to bring us down. Also, I'm thinking about happiness.

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Dennis Prager wites: "Yes, there is a "secret to happiness" - and it is gratitude. All happy people are grateful, and ungrateful people cannot be happy. We tend to think that it is being unhappy that leads people to complain, but it is truer to say that it is complaining that leads to people becoming unhappy. Become grateful and you will become a much happier person." (Happiness Is A Serious Problem, page 59).

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Prager goes on to explain to say that where there is a lack of gratitude there is a lack of happiness. He points out that expectations often undermine gratitude because it is human nature to be unappreciative for what is expected. And in his own words he says something that I've believed for a long time that children must be taught to not just say thank you but to feel thank you. Too often people feel thankfulness for having something only after they've almost lost it. This is why, he points out, the blessings we say at seemingly trivial moments like before we eat and after we go to the bathroom can be so beneficial to us.

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*1 The Feldheim editors changed the text of Ethics From Sinai in recent years, and as can be found in the 2002 edition in Vol II on page 648 the above quote now reads: "Clearly Yeravam wanted to take along his haughty pride with him beyond the grave. And he did." The editors write in their preface to the new edition that "with the massive changes in the English-speaking Jewish community over the years, the need arose for an updated edition." The upshot of the update is the removal of poetic and literary references as well as poetic and literary writing within the text itself.