Kinah And Kanaus - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Usually tyvos and bad middos are related in the Torah to the flesh, eyes and heart. We find one exception - Kinah. The pasuk says רקב עצמות קנאה - Jealousy rots the bones. Why the bones? The word for bone in hebrew is עצם. When one is jealous it penetrates to his very עצמיות - his essential self. He feels that this person has taken in his place in this world and that causes a "rotting" of his עצמות.


There is also קנאה on the positive side. קנאות - zealousness. This occurs when a person feels that someone else has wrongfully taken a place that doesn't belong to him. קנאות is aroused when a Jew has relations with a Gentile woman as we find in the story of Pinchas. He has no right to be with her.


The first קנאי was Yosef HaTzadik. He proclaimed that the place of a Jew is not with a Gentile and he thus withstood the seductions of the wife of Potiphar. The עצמות of Yosef asserts the separation between Jew and Gentile. When the angel claimed at sea that there is no difference between the Jews and Egyptians [הללו עובדי עבודה זרה והללו עובדי עבודה זרה] Yosef's coffin [which passed through the sea] carrying his עצמות was ample evidence that this wasn't true. There is a vast difference between Jew and Gentile.


Those who were tamei because they carried the coffin of Yosef were קנאים and felt that they shouldn't be excluded from the mitzva of Korban Pesach, so they asked for a Pesach Sheni. This power of קנאות and knowing and demanding your rightful place was bequeathed by Yosef.


Let us be a little more "kanaush" - but with a smile and a hug":-).


לזכות קנאי אמיתי - ר' אברהם יצחק בן אסתר וכל ב"ב


[Based on MaRan HaRav Hutner]