There's a word that's been quietly spreading from Hebrew into English: firgun. It describes something that English strangely lacks: the genuine, unselfish joy in another person's success. No ulterior motives, just pure celebration of someone else's accomplishment.
The word entered modern Hebrew in the 1970s from Yiddish farginen, which itself came from German vergönnen. But here's where it gets interesting: in Yiddish, farginen typically meant the opposite—to begrudge. When Israelis borrowed it, they inverted the meaning entirely, transforming a term about withholding joy into one expressing its opposite.
And they were right to do so. Because firgun captures something essential about Israeli culture that the rest of the world struggles to understand.
The closest word in any language to firgun is mudita - a Buddhist term meaning sympathetic joy in others' good fortune. It's considered one of the four "divine abodes," the highest states of being. Buddhist teachers describe mudita as "the most difficult to cultivate" of these sublime attitudes. Extensive meditation practices exist to help develop it.
Think about that: what requires intensive spiritual practice and is considered exceptionally difficult in Buddhist tradition comes naturally enough to Israelis that they coined a casual slang term for it.
But it shouldn't be surprising. Israel ranks 8th in the 2025 World Happiness Report having reached as high as 4th place in 2023. This is remarkable for a country in its second year of war, surrounded by hostile neighbors, facing constant security threats, and experiencing significant internal political tensions. Israeli young adults also rank highest in the world for self-reported quality of social connections.
Year after year, through wars and conflicts, Israel maintains its position among the world's happiest countries. Israel's ranking reflects structural characteristics like social cohesion, quality of relationships, and high levels of mutual support - exactly the kinds of things firgun cultivates.
The contrast with international perception couldn't be starker. While Israel is constantly portrayed as militaristic, aggressive, or morally compromised, the lived reality of Israelis tells a very different story. What the world sees as a nation of villains, Israelis experience as a society of mutual support and genuine celebration of each other's success.
This fits in with Jewish thought. The Torah's prohibition against coveting - lo tachmod - is about cultivating a completely different relationship with other people's blessings.
The commandment is unusual. The other negative Ten Commandments prohibit actions: don't murder, don't steal, don't commit adultery. But "don't covet" addresses the heart. It commands us to feel differently about others' good fortune. The Rabbis asked: how can the Torah command a feeling? Can you really control whether you feel envy?
The wisdom is this: when you train yourself to see the totality of another person's situation, envy dissolves. There's an old Yiddish saying that captures this perfectly: "If everyone brought their bundle of troubles to sell in the market, each person would quickly take back his own." You might envy individual things—your neighbor's house, their spouse, their success—but when you consider everything about someone's life, their complete package of joys and struggles, would you really want to trade? Once you understand that you can't cherry-pick just the good parts of someone else's life, the commandment against coveting becomes not just possible but natural. And in its place, something remarkable emerges: the ability to genuinely celebrate their joys without feeling diminished.The wisdom is this: when you train yourself to see the totality of another person's situation, envy dissolves. And in its place, something remarkable emerges: the ability to genuinely celebrate their joys without feeling diminished.
Jewish tradition has another concept that maps perfectly onto firgun: ayin tova, the "good eye." In Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Eliezer identifies it as one of Abraham's defining traits. Having a good eye means looking well upon others, wishing them well, and being happy in their successes - it refers not to the sharpness of one's sight, but the generosity of one's vision..
Ayin tova is the Jewish framework that makes firgun possible. When you cultivate a generous eye, when you train yourself to see the good in others, to wish them well without agenda, then celebrating their success becomes natural, not difficult.
This is moral engineering in action. The Torah didn't just prohibit envy; it created the conceptual and spiritual infrastructure to make its opposite natural. And in modern Israel, speaking a similar Hebrew to the Torah itself, Israelis inherited this framing. Firgun didn't need to be invented from whole cloth; it emerged organically from a culture steeped in these values.
And here's the painful irony: while the world portrays Israel as uniquely evil, as a society built on oppression and aggression, the actual lived experience of Israelis reflects something quite different. A society where young people have the strongest social connections in the world. Where mutual support remains high even under extreme stress. Where celebrating others' success has its own untranslatable word because it happens so naturally.
The gap between perception and reality here is vast. International media and activists have created an image of Israeli society that bears no resemblance to the measurable facts about how Israelis actually live and treat each other. They've made a pariah of a nation that, by empirical measurement, demonstrates more of what the world claims to value - happiness, social cohesion, mutual support - than their accusers.
Meanwhile, Israelis continue doing what comes naturally: supporting each other, celebrating each other's successes, and maintaining a resilient joy that survives conditions that would break other societies. They've even got a word for it.
Firgun. Try it sometime. It might be hard at first—the Buddhists warn you it will be. But Jews have had a few thousand years' head start.
(h/t Irene)
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