Genuine, ungrudging delight or pride in another person's success or good fortune.
Genuine, ungrudging delight or pride in another person's success or good fortune — generosity of spirit with no ulterior motive. Often called the opposite of schadenfreude.
Differs from pride (which can be self-directed), gratitude (directed at a benefactor), and empathy (sharing any feeling): firgun is specifically the ungrudging, agenda-free joy in another's good — “an affinity that is authentic and without agenda” (Tamar Katriel). Antonym of schadenfreude; close kin to Buddhist mudita.
From Yiddish farginen “not to begrudge (someone something),” from German vergönnen/gönnen “to grant, not begrudge.”
Modern Hebrew slang borrowed from Yiddish farginen (cognate of German vergönnen) “to grant / not begrudge.” The abstract noun “firgun” is a Hebrew innovation.
A relatively modern addition to Hebrew, appearing from the 1970s; its rise as a “culturally focal term” has been argued to track Israel's partial shift from communal toward more individualistic values. An annual “International Firgun Day” (July 17) was founded in 2014.
A notable irony: while firgun is celebrated as a Hebrew “untranslatable,” Israelis often claim the behavior barely exists (“people don't know how to show firgun”), and Yiddishists note the source farginen is mostly used negatively (nisht farginen, “to begrudge”). The “opposite of schadenfreude” gloss flattens this tension between ideal and practice.