The death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in yesterday’s helicopter crash has triggered much happiness among his enemies and opponents. He was an implacable foe of the State of Israel, a Holocaust denier and certainly no lover of the Jewish people. But now the Jewish people are faced with a question: how does one react to this event?
It is probable that the reaction of many if not most Jews is to experience a pleasurable frisson of joy. Is this the right response? Here Pirkei Avot offers an answer. At 4:24 Shmuel HaKatan says,
“Don’t be happy at the downfall of your enemy and don’t let your heart rejoice when he stumbles, in case God sees you [literally “him”] and it’s bad in His eyes, and He turns His anger away from him [i.e. your enemy].”
These words are not his own. They are cut and pasted straight from Sefer Mishlei 24:17-18. Shmuel HaKatan does not elaborate on this quote, thus leaving it open to generations of commentators both on Avot and on Mishlei to offer their own thoughts. Incidentally he is not the only Tanna to have endorsed these verses: Rabbi Eliezer HaGadol includes it as advice to his son (Tzeva’ot deRabbi Eliezer, para 10).
Commentators on Avot have taken these verses from Mishlei as a stand-alone teaching, detaching it from its original context and from the problem of Mishlei 11:10, which states that, when the wicked are destroyed, there is rejoicing (see Sanhedrin 37b). From this it seems that Shmuel HaKatan taught these words because he viewed them as having an immediate contemporary significance above and beyond any meaning that was extracted from learning Mishlei.
So how should we react when an enemy falls? To feel joy is both normal and natural. King David was plainly aware of it when he wrote, “I will exalt you, God, since you have raised me up and did not let my enemies rejoice over me” (Tehillim 30:2). He must have understood what such joy felt like since he was able to project that feeling on to the feelings which he expected his enemies to have. It may well be quite impossible for any normal human to eradicate every last scrap of happiness or pleasure that might be felt when contemplating an adversary’s misfortune. While there is no single Hebrew or English term for this feeling of pleasure at the misfortune of others, the German language has encapsulated it with the word Schadenfreude.
Perhaps the real question underlying this mishnah is how, as a sentient and God-fearing individual who respects human values, one should react to the urge to rejoice when one feels it. In this context we find a sort of precedent in our celebration of Purim. No event in the Jewish calendar has the capacity to trigger exuberant and unabated joy more than Purim. This festival marks the revelation of hidden workings of the Almighty in saving Persia’s Jews from annihilation and in bringing down the proud and pompous antisemite Haman.
On Purim we recall the mood of the moment, as expressed in the Book of Esther: “the Jews had light and happiness and joy and honour” (Esther 8:16). Does this sentiment invite the celebration of the downfall of one’s foes? The context of this verse suggests that this is not so. The event to which this joyful verse refers is not the downfall of Haman at all, but the issue of a royal proclamation that the Jews were allowed to take up arms in order to defend themselves against those who, in accordance with an earlier and irrevocable proclamation, were ordered to exterminate them and plunder their property. Purim celebrations do not therefore contradict our mishnah, since they relate to a sign that, since the Jews had not deserted God, God had not deserted them.
If we cannot channel our joy from the downfall of our enemies to some other source of happiness, it is still open to us to translate it into gratitude. Rather than celebrate the death of President Raisi, we can offer our thanks to God that He has removed one of the many threats that face the Jewish nation and its homeland. Sadly, many such threats remain—but each represents the potential for future thanks to our one and true Protector.
