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"Nafshi Tidom" — drawn from the words we say in Elokai Netzor:
“למקללי נפשי תדום” – “To those who curse me, may my soul be silent.”
In this 5-part series, Rav Shlomo Katz explores one of the deepest Breslov teachings: how to face humiliation (bizyonot) not with anger or revenge, but with silence, emunah, and inner strength.
Drawing from Rabbi Lazer Brody’s sefer Nafshi Tidom, classic sources in Chazal, Chassidus, and the writings of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, Rav Shlomo guides us through:
- Why humiliation comes our way,
- How it serves as a tool for tikkun hamiddot (refinement of character),
- The inner work of silence and acceptance,
- And how our ancestors — from Avraham Avinu to David HaMelech — grew through disgrace.
This is a series about courage, humility, and discovering Hashem’s closeness precisely in moments of shame.
חסיא בת הרב פנחס צבי, זכרונו לברכה. Okay, חברים, we are continuing on a topic we've been learning for the last few times we had the privilege of learning together. It's a very, it's a very heavy topic. And I want to preface again by saying that what we're, what we're doing is that we are looking into all the different אפשרויות, all the different possibilities where if you feel that you have suffered any sense of being humiliated or belittled by anyone else, what the gut reaction should be and where you should turn to.
The basis of everything that we're learning is the way that the, the essential בעל תשובה in the Torah, which was יהודה, he paved this whole path for us continuing then with דוד המלך and the whole line of משיח, the whole line of taking responsibility, is that when something comes down on you hard and you go through it hard, or you go through it, not hard yet, but it's hitting home, where do you first go? What's your initial reaction? And יהודה in פרשת מקץ really, really paves that place for us of saying אבל אשמים אנחנו, אשום אשם להשם. יהודה relieved the brothers in saying, listen, we can keep on blaming everyone else for why things are so bad. There's something bigger going on over here. The way we learn our lives is that anything that happens to us that whether it's from within or from without has to do with our life.
Last שיעור what we did was 14 different reasons that Rav Brody showed us that when it comes to a בזיון that you go through, when there's problems that have happened between you and הקדוש ברוך הוא, directly between you and God, which this בזיון, this humiliation that you go through in your life is coming to smack you around based on 14 different options or possibilities that you've done between you and השם. That was 14, and we ran through it. Today we're going to be doing six because the next six, we have a few minutes, בעזרת השם we'll get through this. Now it's six different reasons for בזיונות that are מידה כנגד מידה כנגד בין אדם לחברו.
This is where it gets a little bit a little bit more intense. Six different things that possibly could be the reasons why you're suffering humiliation in your life because between you and your friend, between two people things were shaky. And the first one is a very clear one, which brings up a lot of גמרות that we've all learned in the past, but basically the סיבה, the first סיבה is בגלל שביישת את הזולת, that you actually simply embarrassed someone. You don't even remember that you embarrassed someone.
It's you completely forgot about it, but at a certain point in your life, it could be that a word you said, בין במודע בין שלא במודע, caused someone בושה. By the חפץ חיים we see in his הלכות לשון הרע, how you have to be so מקפיד even say good things about somebody. How could you have such an ענין? Because we see how easy it is that even מתוך שאני אומר דברים טובים, משהו רע יכול לצאת מזה. I have to be careful בכלל.
I could come and start praising somebody. מתוך that praising something, somehow the guy gets embarrassed. You had no כוונה at all to do that. But these are דברים שבכל יום, these things happen all the time.
So the first thing is מי שמבייש את הזולת. Like it says in the משנה אבות, איזהו מכובד? המכבד את הבריות. Who is someone that's מכובד? Someone that honors other creations. שנאמר, כי מכבדי אכבד ובוזי יקלו.
Like it's brought down in a פסוק from שמואל, I give honor to those that honor and that respect, and those that בוזי, on a בזיון, those that humiliate me, אוי וויי איז מיר, it's a bad scene. And everyone's asking, why is השם saying that he gets humiliated when you humiliate someone else? Exactly. If you're humiliating, if you're humiliating someone else, make no mistake about it, you're actually really causing an עלבון להקדוש ברוך הוא. What גמרא shows us this the best? It's a very hard גמרא to understand how such a reality could be, but the famous גמרא in מסכת תענית about רבי אלעזר בן רבי שמעון.
Ah, רבי שמעון בן אלעזר, when he meets a person on the street, remember what he says to him? The person says שלום to him and רבי שמעון בן אלעזר looks at him and he's just like, God, you are, you are so ugly. You know this גמרא, right? It's a גמרא that, what's the hardest part of this גמרא? How could it be that he, how could it be that he could say, the fact that people look at people who are ugly, I think we're, אלו דברים שבכל יום, but that it's him, someone that's learning day and night can see another בריאה and that's the initial reaction is, גוואלד, are you ugly? And then obviously the response that he gets, he says to him, you have a problem, take it up with the boss. That's basically the answer he gives him, right? Now, he really, the גמרא describes to us that he realizes right away, wow, that answer, you have a problem with the way that I look. go and take it up with the person that made me look like this, he does תשובה on the spot.
It says מייד נשתטח פניו. He put his he put his head into the ground in front of him and said I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And the person said, you're not really מוחל until you ask I'm sorry from השם. Not from me, even though you humiliated me.
The story continues that basically he followed him till the city where this ugly man lived, and the whole time that he followed him to the city, he put his head into the ground while he was being followed to show everyone in the כפר how how disgusted he was that he could be such a holy צדיק, but the second he leaves the בית מדרש, he looks at someone and sees ugliness in them.So, א, if that's we see this all the time, if there's ever been any element of עלבון by somebody else, שבישת מישהו אחר, these things come back to us. ב. Is it is it also an element that you're you're insulting God's creation and anytime you insult somebody it's the צלם אלוקים that you're. בדיוק זה.
No that's a בדיוק זה. You're insulting, you're basically saying השם your decision is is really, there's a defect in your in your there's a defect in your machine. Anytime you be anytime you humiliate someone, you're basically basically saying to God there's a defect in your machine, in your מפעל, in your factory. It's not coming out good.
That's really what you're doing. נכון. The second, the second reason that רבי רודי brings here is בגלל שביש את אבותיו של הזולת. This is a crazy, he brings this חידוש from רבי נחמן, ספר המידות.
כשאחד מבזה אותך או צוחק ממך, בידוע שאתה בישת את אבותיו. If someone comes to you and starts pounding on you and gives you some a little bit of a זץ, a little bit of humiliation, he says it's known that in previously you spoke smack about his father. שבישת את אבותיו when you say something bad about somebody, the next generation can come back quite frankly and come back and finish finish off the תיקון. He brings a פסוק from איוב.
איוב, איוב experienced this very much where he realized when he started doing internalization of why are all these things happening to him, he realized that at a certain point in his life, he belittled the רואה צאן. He belittled the certain people of their profession. He didn't really think it was so honorable. The next generation comes and starts laughing at at איוב and at his situation.
So he looked deep into how did I treat this person's parents? That's ב. The third thing is, בגלל שהכשילו רבים. This is a scary one for anyone that teaches Torah. If you if you lead someone on the wrong path, you put a little bit of a stumbling block because you weren't clear as to what you were trying to do.
He says when you, and he brings it from דוד המלך, בור כרה ויחפרהו ויפול בשחת יפעל. You came and you dug a hole and others fell into it. At the end, he says the same hole that you dug, you yourself fall into it. And רבי נחמן says like this in ספר המידות, מי שכורה בור, סוף שיבוא לידי איזה ביזיון.
If you all you did was dug a hole without any explanation as to why you're doing this but you just let people fall, at the end you're going to fall into the own thing that you yourself that you yourself placed. There's a lot to say on this עניין, a lot to say on this עניין, but I want to continue right now.The next reason רבי רודי brings down is, and this is a very, very big one that I find us going through this ניסיון day in, day out, more than ever, is ביזיון תלמידי חכמים and ביזיון צדיקים. The media the media messes with us with this one. Big time.
Because so many things are taking out of context all the time. Quotes from צדיקים. I'll I'll just tell you straight up and I I I once shared this with Sami I think a while ago. And I had to do a big, big חשבון נפש.
The the night of רב עובדיה's funeral. I couldn't understand what's going on because suddenly all the media and the radio and the TV and internet, it's all הספדים and speaking about the greatness of רב עובדיה. I grew up in this country. I never heard one good thing about רב עובדיה יוסף all my life from any outlet here.
None. Nothing. Nothing. Not one thing.
I was like, wow. Suddenly he he dies, all this חברה now that were מתנף their mouth by speaking so ill about him, suddenly now they start speaking, saying, I was wondering, what is going on over here? Every word רב עובדיה said that the קטני אמונה, the small-minded people that were hearing it, took out were taken out of context and created a very, very negative feeling by many people that didn't find themselves amongst the מחנה of understanding his לשון and his way of speaking. We see this by a lot of different people. We see this and it's easy targets also because you expect perfection and godliness by people that כיכול represent השם, if something they say is portrayed to you in a way.
that messes with your mind, יאללה, let's go and speak whatever you want about them. It happened two weeks ago again with someone who wrote, someone that wrote a horrible article about רב Drukman taking one thing that he said out of context and thus opening the gate for like, יאללה, let's now pile this up. Brody says and he brings down a lot of sources over here. Don't be so fast.
Don't be so fast when it comes to צדיקים and תלמידי חכמים to go out and so fast start saying things that aren't easily taken back because they come back. This is a מידה כנגד מידה. When you're מבזה your mouth amongst, about צדיקים, המבזה את הצדיק, Rabbi Nachman says, גם הוא בעצמו נתפזה. Anyone that speaks ill of a צדיק, the same things you speak about the צדיק come back and humiliate you in your life as well.
That's a very deep thing. I'm telling you, I'll tell you another thing. Recently, this past year, we had some two great, huge צדיקים, חכמי ספרד that passed away. חכם שלום כהן, זכר צדיק לברכה and now רב Ba'adani, just was just נפטר, right? Do you know the only thing that we ever heard about חכם שלום כהן, זכר צדיק לברכה, any of his תורה in the last 10 years, that was ever said out there in the world? I'll tell you one.
And I'm so embarrassed about this, but it's good stuff. Many years ago during the nine days, he said, and I'm sure this was also taken out of context, but that's the thing that was portrayed out in the public. He said about Amalek, it says, כי יד על כס כה. The hand of Amalek is on the, right, כי יד על כס כה.
It covers up the name of God, right? What did he say, they said that כס stood for? כס, כיפה סרוגה. If that's what you're going to, if that's what you're going to hear, and that's all you think there is to it, let it roll, right? But you got to have such יראת שמים and חכמה and תבונה to understand, wait a second. These are גדולים. First of all, I don't know him.
א'. Second of all, of course, they're going to feed me something that's going to fire me up. This ענין, meaning they, the media, whatever it is, the outlets that get to us. This ענין of hearing things from צדיקים that make us feel uncomfortable, וכו', the first thing is I probably don't understand anything.
The second thing is I probably still don't understand anything. The third thing is I have ביטול before bigger things in life. I have to realize this is the other side ממש playing with me. And I have to be very, very careful of these things because המבזה תלמיד חכם, this is one of the מידות כנגד מידות that comes back at you, and you've suffered tremendous בזיונות in this world when your כבוד for צדיקים is not in check.
It's a very, very big thing, a very important thing. In fact, when I hear people say sometimes stuff about Rav Riskin, because, you know, he's, he's slowly more lenient in certain areas, וכו'. השם ירחם. השם ירחם.
We have to, we have to guard our mouths from such things and not get involved in this stuff, because this stuff comes back. This is dangerous stuff, this stuff comes back to us. That was the next one. The other three, we have to end.
The other, the, we're going to finish the next, the next two. We just did, we did four of them. This is four out of six. The next one is after בזיונות צדיקים, he says general sense of ליצנות.
General sense of being of clowning around. You don't realize that it can bring a ביזיון of yourself. So when you portray yourself as, you're humiliated, you know, at the end of the day, these things come back and you actually are humiliated. Basically, not to be a מושב ליצים.
To be someone that not necessarily you have to take everything so seriously, but not to clown around. Clowning around, he says, comes back and doesn't make life that that pleasant. And he quotes here from תהילים, from the גמרא in סוטה. הקדוש ברוך הוא מתאב ליצנות, וכת הליצים אינה מקבלת פני השכינה.
The clowners, the clowning around, they don't basically, their מציאות is at that moment if there's going to be a Godly revelation in the world, the clowning around is not the right כלי קיבול, the receptor, to receive tremendous light and a גילוי אלוקים at that moment. And the last one that he says is a very, very hard one, but I do believe it's one that we could relate to. סיבה כ', that's the 20th reason. The sixth one out of six about בין אדם לחברו.
בגלל ששמח בצרת חברו. You ever feel better when someone else is suffering? You ever feel better when someone, it says a hard, don't, always into honesty and everything. This is not the time to like raise hands or anything. I'm just putting it out there, but did you ever feel a little bit better? heard that someone's not making as much money as you thought he was making? When a terrorist suffers? When a terrorist suffers.
בגלל ששמח בצרת חברו. We're not talking about that stuff. חברו. We're talking about when someone that, when someone that's close to you is not as, listen.
This this is a very delicate one. And if we had an hour right now to develop this concept, we would understand psychologically how this thing really, you know, really works. It also works when it comes to consolation. My dear friends, the Weisses when they were sitting שבעה over their son Ari, like with my dear friend.
So the the people that probably were the only people that really were able to give them a נחמה was when other bereaved parents came and sat with them and just their presence, just their presence themselves of that they had been through this as well, they were able to to relate and that brought it down a little bit. Sometimes we always want to have like relatable things. That that that that taught me a tremendous amount. We always get this like ענין, here it's a little, here it's it's very חמור what we're trying what we're trying to say over here, is that when someone suffers, inside of us, there's almost this like, I'm not saying this happens, I'm saying חס ושלום if this is a מידה that we have, that we have a little bit of of feeling good, not that they're suffering, but that they're not enjoying life as good as we thought they were enjoying life.
And that's a that that מידה comes back. He says over here, and he quotes רבי נחמן, גם בושה באה כשאתה משמח בצרת חבריך. And וצ'רינירוב explained this, that this עיקרון is learned in the פסוק, ישובו על עקב עקב בושתם האומרים האח האח. רש"י teaches us there, the מידה כנגד מידה, מידה במידה כמו שעשו לי על עקב באותו מעגל עצמו.
When you hear that someone is is someone's life became נבך and you think that it's justified and it makes you feel good inside, at that moment, that's preparing the way for you to come and get a זעץ. וחבל מאוד. So this last עיקרון is one that needs a lot of התבודדות. And basically all these 20 reasons need התבודדות.
Because what we're learning over here is not, I'm tell, he's not saying over here, check into all these 20 reasons, 14 בן אדם למקום and six בן אדם לחברו and you'll see that you you're אתה פוגם בכולם and that's why your life is miserable. But what he's saying over here is that if you suffer a life of בזיונות and עלבונות, there are places to go inside and do a בדק הבית and saying, where am I holding over here? Where am I holding with this? Where am I holding with דיבור הצדיקים? Where am I holding with all the things that we learned? And for sure amongst one of those things, I could begin to cleanse my way as a response to השם, not, why is this happening to me? But I'm sincerely asking, sincerely, I really would love to know why this is happening to me. Because I I don't want to just be, I actually want to know. I actually want to know.
And I'm bold enough to, I have enough guts, I'm brave enough to ask ריבונו של עולם, הורני את חוקיך, show me the way, and I'm going to go בדק הבית in any of these areas. So these are 20 different reasons למעשה that we could work with. What we're going to be going to from here on is דוקא different things that are simply בזיונות to bring out love. This was just בזיונות that we don't even understand what they're about.
But next is that certain humiliations a person has to go through in this world, and he's going to show us how this is the story of our אבות ואמהות, only to extract out the מידה של אהבה that's קיים between all of us. And that should be the final, that should be the final result of any of this learning. It's only to to learn about ourselves better, to get clear, do the עבודה and the תיקונים כמו שצריך in order to be closer to all those people and כביכול to השם, where God forbid there was a בזיון that took place. רבי חנניא בן עקשיא אומר רצה הקדוש ברוך הוא לזכות את ישראל לפיכך הרבה להם תורה ומצוות שנאמר אדוני חפץ למען צדקו יגדיל תורה ויאדיר.