In preparation for this week’s parsha column, I did a search for famous quotes about success. I found hundreds of examples of high-sounding praises of success, ranging from Winston Churchill’s, “Success consists of going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm,” to Benjamin Disraeli’s, “Success is the child of audacity.”

My own experience with successful individuals is based upon both my career as a psychologist and my years as a pulpit rabbi.

Long ago, I was part of a mental health clinic in suburban Washington, D.C. The clientele consisted mainly of “high profile” government officials whose identity I am forbidden to disclose to this very day. From those famous, colorful, and, yes, successful clients, I learned much about the downsides of success.

As a rabbi, I would often wish success, or hatzlacha, to individuals who sought my blessing in their professional careers or for personal projects. I cannot tell you how many of those individuals returned to me with the following complaint: “Rabbi, I credit you with the success I have achieved, but you failed to warn me of the challenges that inevitably accompany the achievement of success.”

In this week’s Torah portion, Va’era (Exodus 6:2-9:35), we encounter the Pharoah of ancient Egypt, a very successful and extremely powerful man. With his success came the cruel arrogance and unbending stubbornness which eventually led to his downfall.

The Midrash Rabbah (section 8, paragraph 3) informs us that so great was his success that he declared himself to be a god and indoctrinated his subordinates to worship him as a deity.

He went so far as to convince others that he was beyond human bodily needs and that the River Nile, the ultimate symbol of the Egyptian religion and culture, was his own creation.

The great Mussar Master, Rabbi Chaim Zeitchik, of blessed memory, waxes eloquent in his description of the moral and psychological flaws of those who are inebriated by their success in life. I should mention that Rabbi Zeitchik was a student of the Novardik Yeshiva in pre-Holocaust Eastern Europe, a disseminator of its teachings who spent the Holocaust years as a prisoner in Siberia and who left behind a treasure trove of brilliant moralistic essays. Many of those essays are included in a collection entitled Ohr Chadash.

He reflects upon the above midrash as follows:

“The humans who made gods of themselves were drunk with success, crazed by their astounding achievements in life and by the extent of their capabilities. Their reign was so effective that they began to believe in their own powers and became certain that they were unique individuals, unlike all others. They experienced themselves as messengers from above, as possessors of hidden knowledge. They were convinced that they were granted divine authority and magical abilities to rule the world.”

Rabbi Zeitchik apparently had a thorough mastery of midrashic literature, for he can draw from a wide reservoir of such sources to prove his major thesis: Success breeds arrogance and self-centeredness, which surprisingly transmute into literal self-worship.

Thus, he cites the Midrash Yalkut Ezekiel, chapter 28 item 367, which enumerates four historic figures who made gods of themselves and were harmed in the process. Besides the Pharoah of Egypt mentioned earlier, the list includes Hiram king of Tyre, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and Yehoash king of Judah.

He comments elaborately on all four of these self-proclaimed deities, but I found his analysis of Yehoash’s illusion of grandeur particularly insightful.

You may recall from your study of the Book of Kings that Yehoash was confined as a youth in no less a secret hiding place than the Holy of Holies, the inner Temple sanctuary which was off limits to all but the High Priest on Yom Kippur.

Yehoash had a mentor, Yehoyada, whose tutelage he followed punctiliously, always doing what was correct in the eyes of the Lord. But the midrash relates that upon Yehoyada’s death, the princes of the tribe of Judah gathered about Yehoash and declared him divine. They insisted that all who entered the Holy of Holies were punished by death, but that he hid therein for several years and survived. They, therefore, concluded that he must be a god.

Tragically for all involved, Yehoash concurred with their conclusion and accepted the mantle of the divine god. Rabbi Zeitchik maintains that we need not be astonished that a disciple of Yehoyada who kept all the Almighty’s mitzvot impeccably would suddenly revert to blatant, and senseless, idolatry and declare himself a god.

We can understand this seemingly inexplicable transformation of Yehoash, argues Rabbi Zeitchik, if we but consider Yehoash’s life experience from his childhood until his mentor’s death. It was a life of success, indeed miraculous success. What greater success can a person enjoy than survival in the attic of the Holy of Holies, a chamber even more sacred than the Holy of Holies itself? Such success could easily have gone to Yehoash’s head and lead him to affirm that he had divine powers and could be called a god.

We can, nevertheless, wonder about his compliance with his royal advisors. Are we not to assume that his teacher Yehoyada, who taught him all there is to know about the sin of idolatry, had also instructed him not to make a god of himself?

To answer this question, Rabbi Zeitchik refers us to a work by Rabbi Yonasan Eybeschutz, an outstanding Torah scholar of the eighteenth century. The work is a commentary on the haftarot entitled Ahavat Yonasan and can be found in the haftarah for Parshat Shekalim.

There, Rabbi Eybeschutz explains that of course Yehoyada taught his royal pupil all about the prohibitions of worshipping false gods. But Yehoyada could not imagine in his wildest dreams that a person could come to think of himself as God. He could not imagine that a normal human being could be foolish enough to become so crazed, so possessed by the demon of excessive success, that he would come to consider himself a god.

Little did Yehoyada know that there are indeed such individuals, people so drunk by their mundane successes that they consider themselves godlike. He could not conceive of flesh and blood humans who feel that they are immune to error and need never consult others for advice and who identify as quasi divine beings to whom we all owe unquestioning loyalty and total obedience.

Whereas the midrash only identifies four such individuals, history and current events indicate that success can overwhelm reason and result in people in power who think of themselves as gods and demand that others assent to their delusions.