NUM323 R. El'azar haKappar said: Envy, inordinate desire, and [the search for] glory remove a man from the world. Pirkei Avot, Perek IV, mishnah 28. … Envy, strong desire, and honor can be constructive or destructive elements. But then the question arises: why does our Sage utterly condemn them? For our answer let us look again at the mishnah; we may find that the words denote both directions of interpretation. These three ways of perceiving or being, says our text, "remove, or rather, take a man from the world." But what is a man's "world?" It is his local area of day-by-day living; the ongoing normal, ordinary level of his life and activity. Once he is stimulated and impelled by such strong emotions as jealousy, desire, or the wish for esteem, he is jolted out of the level of the ordinary and the everyday. He is forced to leave his "world" as he knows it, for it will never again be the same. Such strong emotions bring inner revolution: he will now be catapulted into either the Divine or the demonic. It is as though a car receives a new surge of power which forces it to accelerate, so that the driver must leave the local lane for an express highway; but it is for him to choose the highway. Much will depend on the person's basic values. Does he find he is violently jealous by nature, little able to bear in others what he finds disturbing or threatening? Pinchas (Phineas) "was jealous for his God" [this verse]: when he saw flagrant immorality that others watched passively, helplessly, he took a violent action; but as the Almighty testified, "he was jealous with My jealousy," [ibid., 10; verses 6-8). And his action brought peace where disaster threatened. He channeled a destructive emotion into a Godly purpose.