Rabbi Elazar Ha-kappar said: envy, desire, and honor remove a person from the world.
The three deadly sins, according to Rabbi Elazar Ha-kappar, are “envy, desire, and honor.” These vices are psychologically, physically, and spiritually corrosive. They disrupt logical thinking and long-term goals, writes Rabbi Moshe Almosnino, influencing one to choose more short-term and destructive decisions. Rabbi Marc Angel notes, “envy, lust, and seeking of honor are negative qualities that do not give full satisfaction; they are bottomless pits that pull a person further away from a strong, happy life.” They can metaphorically remove a person’s sense of identity as they struggle with the pernicious toll of these flaws. They can also quite literally remove a person from this world, with addictive decision-making shortening life expectancy. Their sinful nature can remove a person from the benefits of the next world, as well.
Envy
The American Psychological Association defines envy as “a negative emotion of discontent and resentment generated by desire for the possessions, attributes, qualities, or achievements of another (the target of the envy).” Envy is associated with higher rates of depression and anxiety, lower self-esteem, and relationship difficulties.
Emotion theorists distinguish between unhealthy envy and benign envy. The latter can be adaptively motivating, generating an admiration and desire for emulation of positive traits. While this Mishna highlights the challenges of the former, Rabbeinu Yonah distinguishes between several categories of envy, noting that some are more destructive than others, and suggesting that some may even be constructive.
Writing about why envy is included as the tenth commandment, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks discusses how corrosive envy is not just to an individual but to society as a whole. He writes,
The greatest challenge of any society is how to contain the universal phenomenon of envy: the desire to have what belongs to someone else. Rene Girard, in Violence and the Sacred, argued that the primary driver of human violence is mimetic desire, that is, the desire to have what someone else has, which is ultimately the desire to be what someone else is. Envy can lead to breaking many of the other commands: it can move people to adultery, theft, false testimony and even murder. It led Cain to murder Abel, made Abraham and Isaac fear for their life because they were married to beautiful women, and led Joseph’s brothers to hate him and sell him into slavery. It was envy of their neighbours that led the Israelites often to imitate their religious practices and worship their gods.
This framing by Rabbi Sacks lends credence to Rabbi Samual de Uceda's suggestion that out of the three vices listed, envy is the most destructive.
Desire
Desire, Maimonides notes, will interfere with a person’s mission in life to strive for knowledge and pristine character. This will definitionally negatively impact well-being in this world. Rabbi Yosef Yavetz adds that giving in to desires can also impact physical health, with various diseases and afflictions that can be acquired by means of resigning to physical temptations.
In the Psychology of Desire, Wilhelm Hofman and colleagues define desire as “motivations that propel us to approach certain stimuli in our environment and engage in activities with them that provide us with a relative gain in immediate pleasure.” This can include desires based on physiological needs, such as food, as well as those learned through reinforcement such as media addiction. Rabbeinu Yonah includes not just prohibited desires in this concept, but even ones that are permitted. As Nahmanides writes, someone can technically fulfill the commandments and be a “scoundrel within the permissible bounds of Torah.” Indulging too much even in the permissible can be determinantal.
Honor
An unhealthy pursuit of securing honor from others is also harmful to well-being. Some link the prophesied destruction to social consequences. Someone who constantly desires power and honor will likely create enemies and will be consumed by political turmoil. Others focus on the psychological ramifications. Pursuing prestige or approval to enhance one’s self-worth is problematic. As Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski often does, he ties this psychological deficiency to low self-esteem. Someone with a sense of inferiority will have only transient relief when he gets acclaim. No reassurance will be sufficient. As he writes, “trying to compensate for an imagined deficiency is like trying to fill a bottomless pit. All efforts are futile, and the person exhausts himself trying to do the impossible.”
The antidote to these three vices, writes Abarbanel, lies in the pursuit of their corresponding virtues addressed in Ben Zoma’s teaching that opened the fourth chapter of Avot. Being “satisfied with one’s lot” ameliorates the tendency towards envy. “Conquering one’s desires” with the requisite self-control avoids the pitfalls of passions. Finally, “honoring others” is the strategy that displaces one’s own aspiration for honor by focusing on the other. Instead of a constant need for external validation and fulfillment, Ben Zoma’s prescription proposes self-growth through personal agency.
