The greatest indictment of Israel is not what she has done wrong, but what she has done right.

The more successful Israel becomes—in technology, science, medicine, economics, agriculture, intelligence, and military innovation—the more she is envied, hated, and maligned. A tiny Jewish state, reborn from the ashes of the Holocaust and surrounded by enemies determined to destroy it, has accomplished what many far larger and wealthier nations have failed to achieve.

And in the most basic sense, that should not surprise us.

Is envy not one of the oldest and most persistent flaws in the human psyche? The Tenth Commandment speaks directly to it: “You shall not covet.” Judaism understood thousands of years ago that human beings would inevitably compare themselves with others and desire what others possess. But Judaism does not pretend these impulses can simply be wished away. It teaches something more demanding: we must learn to control them rather than allow them to control us.

That distinction is central to Tanya, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi’s foundational work on Jewish spirituality. He distinguishes between the tzadik, the righteous person whose evil impulses have completely been subordinated or transformed, and the benoni, the ordinary person who continues to experience those impulses but refuses to allow them to govern his thoughts, speech, or actions.

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