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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.
It's been something I wanted to learn for a long time already. And it was a ספר that came to me. It was a ספר that came a few months ago. Yossi, I think you were the שליח to give it to me, could be.
This ספר has been sitting on my shelf. Whenever I whenever I I take it down, I get such חזק for a few minutes. And that is a ספר that's called נפשי תדום. נפשי תדום.
Basically, we just said, and we say in the שמונה עשרה, it's based on the תפילה that we say in אלוקי נצור. We say the famous תפילה from, is it רבא? I forget who right now. We say the תפילה, ולמקללי נפשי תדום ונפשי כעפר לכל תהיה. What does it mean that my soul should be like עפר before everyone? This is basically a whole ספר about בזיונות.
About going through בזיונות, about going through disgraces, about how to deal, a halachic status of dealing with insults, dealing with being deceived, not deceiving others, going through humiliation, and all the different halachic and also מחשבה things, ענינים that are all שייך to. And he starts off and this ספר is is is a very powerful ספר. I think it's one thing that everyone can say that even if you don't run after it, it runs after you at a certain point in life. Each person feels at a certain point in life a certain שטיקל בזיון, a שטיקל bit of a feeling disgraced, a feeling going through something לא נעים, לא טוב.
But if we learn the right כלים how to deal with it, and what the הלכה has to say about it, everyone that's been through it and that has come out with a תיקון המדות understands that this is an incredible, incredible opportunity of self-refinement and purification in ways that you can reach that something would take you millions of years if you didn't go through it. One of the reasons why I feel so close to this ספר, obviously it's because it's from written from someone that went through it. So he knows what he's talking about. He's a dear friend of the קהילה.
I just spoke to him before מנחה and got such חזק knowing that we're going to start to learn this a little bit. And I think it'll give us a tremendous amount of כח and do some very important inner work in in the in just the day-to-day grind of how we have to get around doing what we have to do in this world.So, one of the things that we know about this ענין of dealing with בזיונות is that there's no מסכתא. There's no מסכת בזיונות. There's not a proper מסכת that says this is exactly all the ins and outs of what you're supposed to do, how you're supposed to go through such a thing.
We have a few גמרות here and there. We have definitely פרקי מחשבה throughout a lot of the ספרים, especially the ספרי מוסר. And also a bunch of the ספרי חסידות. But the famous גמרא comes to mind in מסכת גיטין that we all know of, הנעלבים ואינם עולבים.
שומעים חרפתם ואין משיבים. עושים מאהבה ושמחים בייסורים עליהם הכתוב אומר ואהביו כצאת השמש בגבורתו. We know this very, it's a very beautiful thing, it's a pretty mysterious, we're not really sure what it means, and what this ספר is going to do is to help us attempt to understand what the פנימיות of this statement is. Those that are insulted, that get insulted but then don't lash out and don't insult others, שומעים חרפתם ואין משיבים, and you hear your own חרפה and you don't answer back.
כמובן this is very much related, we're going to see how we're going to touch upon תורה ו' in ליקוטי מוהר"ן, which is all about this ענין. The עיקר of תשובה is obviously to get to this place, but to really be living in that place, to be a person that really lives in that in that place where I know what to do when בזיונות come my way. It's a different life. And again, anyone that's tasted this knows exactly what I'm talking about.
הלוואי I should know what I'm talking about. Definitely gone through בזיונות. I definitely am not going to say that I knew how to deal with them properly. But this is a very, very important ענין and a יסוד that's going to help us with a lot of other areas in life that all have to do with תיקון המידות.
And he brings down here a very important thing that when someone learns something like this type of topic, he's מובטח לו, he has a certain promise for long, a long and happy life, when this becomes something that I take on head-on and I don't wait for it to happen. What does he base it on? A very interesting זוהר. Listen to this זוהר. The זוהר says like this, זוהר חדש מדרש רות.
כרוזא כריז בכל יומא, a voice comes out every single day, and it says like this, זכאין אינון חברייא דמשתדלי באורייתא ואינון דמזכין ליה לאחרינן ואינון דמעבירין על מדותיהו. Every single day a voice comes out from heaven and it proclaims, praiseworthy are those that learn Torah, that are dealing with Torah. The Torah is their life. That's one.
And they have מזכה את הרבים. That means the opportunity to teach or share something that you learned with others. That's the second thing. And the third thing is, the hardest one I would say, מי שמעביר על מדותיו.
That means a person that takes this and doesn't just keep this in the realm of theoretical, of theory, but ממש practical. These three things, learning תורה, מזכה את הרבים, and then taking what they learned to basically be מעביר על מדותיו. מעביר על מדותיו is a term that we, you know, obviously, we we liken it to the way we we ask השם, ראש השנה and יום כיפור and סליחות. מעביר על מדותיו means whatever is my natural state of being, and I'm naturally going to leash out, or I'm naturally going to do something like this, I go above and beyond.
Somehow I'm able to transcend what the natural me would do. Because when we naturally respond to something, like Rabbi Briskin who told us the first week we were learning here in סמיכה, he said when it comes to self-justification, everyone is the greatest תלמיד חכם צדיק יסוד עולם that ever existed. When it comes to self-justification, זאת אומרת, when I naturally respond in a manner that makes sense to my nature, it's clear to me as daylight that that is right. Why? Why? I don't know.
But I I'm telling you that's the right thing to do. This person ripped into me, I'm going to rip back into him at that moment. Why? Because for sure, שזה מגיע לו. It can't be that it's not.Anyone that's able to be מעביר על מדותיו, to go above that, and we're going to give a lot of different examples of what that means, we're going into a world of ניקיון פנימי, of really getting clean inside.
And like we said before, taking the whole world of טהרת המידות, of purifying our מידות, taking it to the next level. But we have to do something to understand the הלכות here and how this plays out with a simple thing of a הגדרה. הגדרה means a definition. What is a ביזיון? What is a disgrace? It can mean certain things to different people.
Bless you. We have ספר החינוך, we have ספרים that help us understand, you know, what this הגדרה literally means. What's the meaning of this? So let's see what he says is like this. The way he he's gonna we're gonna go inside, but first he gives a nice paragraph which explains it, I think very very clearly.
ביזיון הוא כל מעשה או דיבור הגורם צער, בושה, כלימה, עלבון, או פגיעה בכבוד הזולת. The definition of a ביזיון, not even sure disgrace is the right word over here, let's just use it as ביזיון. Anyone that, any action or a word which causes pain, shame, embarrassment, insult, or any level of hurt in the כבוד of someone else, בין בשוגג ובין במזיד, whether it was accidentally or it was by purpose, בין ברבים בין ביחיד, whether it was through, obviously, the larger crowd is more more of a problem, but even if it's one on one. Sometimes we're like, listen, I'm not gonna rip into this guy because there's a lot of people here, I'm gonna wait till we're one on one.
So maybe שכיח you were able to, you know, פחות בושה ברבים, but the עניין itself of of reprimanding, of going, not reprimanding, but of unleashing and not going through the ביזיון, that didn't change whether it's יחיד or whether it's רבים.ובענין דיבור, אין חילוק בין אמת לשקר. And now you could say, listen, I was saying אמת. So that if I'm saying אמת, does that fall under being מבזה someone? Absolutely, 100%. You know how you can learn all of הלכות חפץ חיים of the לשון of the שמירת הלשון of the from the חפץ חיים and you can come out with all the היתרים to figure out exactly how I can speak לשון הרע about somebody.
There's a way you could learn like that too, right? I learned every single עניין of how it's מותר for me, בשם השם צבאות, so מזל טוב. You found the way to go through it, but the עניין of taking advantage of an opportunity of going through a ביזיון, you missed it. And that's the חובה here. So this for this category of ביזיונות, also בין אמת לשקר, same thing.
כל הנכנס בגדר מצער, מעליב או מביך ומבייש, הרי זה ביזיון. Anyone that falls into the category of causing pain, of insult, or embarrassing falls under the category of of ביזיונות, which the תורה, of course, says it's absolutely אסור. Now where is the תורה say that it's אסור to מבזה someone? What פסוק do we have in the תורה that says it's absolutely forbidden and it's אסור? Here's where it gets a little bit tricky. Because you could take a bunch of different דרשות off of פסוקים and say this is what it means.
For instance, לא תקלל חרש, like what? Great. Beautiful. דרש, not פשט, דרש, yeah. קדושים תהיו.
What else? לא תחללו את שם קדשי. I don't know, you can, what else? Throw out a few more. We could say on this, this is what it means, the תורה, this is how you know the תורה says ביזיון is אסור. when יעקב switched his hands, he could have said no, let's, he just switched his hands and showed the brothers when they see that he switched the hands.
So he was, so who was who was going through, he didn't want to be, he didn't want to embarrass the boys. He didn't want to embarrass the boys. They would have had their eyes closed. He crossed his hands.
He wouldn't have known that he switched his hands. נכון מאוד. Even if יוסף's sons were out of the room. Another great example.
I mean these are great examples. You said ואהבת לרעך כמוך. That that could be a very easy one to say listen, it probably falls under that category, and many, many others. But there's דווקא something that the אחרונים use, ראשונים and the אחרונים use to understand where the concept of בזיון is, you want to say something? When with the eating of the the עץ הדעת.
How so? You're getting trippy already. They were naked. They were embarrassed because they were, they they they knew they were naked. And השם says, like, I don't know if he was human.
So a בזיון came out of that. Okay, you're going whoo. This is the first מנחה מעריב, you're already at the, Okay, let's let's see, let's see inside. We have a just a number of more a few more minutes here.
This is this is something very, very powerful.So when the Torah says, ולא תונו איש את עמיתו, ולא תונו איש את עמיתו. What's הונאה? הונאה is deception. That's the best way we can understand the word הונאה. There are three types of הונאה, of an איסור to deceive.
הונאת דברים, הונאת ממון, and הונאת קרקעות. When it comes to words you can be deceiving, when it comes to money, and when it comes to property, which some say those two are very similar but there are חילוקים over there. Here he's saying that the פסוק, ולא תונו איש את עמיתו, that one cannot deceive his fellow, so רש"י, רבינו בחיי, the רמב"ם, the בעל החינוך learn from here the איסור for הונאת דברים. For not deceiving with your with your mouth, meaning, שלא יכניס את חבירו.
להכניס is to irritate, to to irritate, to say something to, like, to get to your friend. ולא ישיאנו עצה שאינה הגונה לו. When a person comes for advice and you tell him, basically, you know, this happened recently. I saw two people at a at a table that felt that realized that they know someone that's a גביר.
They just didn't know he was a גביר, but they knew him. Then they started doing חשבונות in their minds, who's going to get to him first to get some money for their project. And I saw one of them told the other one an עצה which would have basically enabled him to be the first one to get there. דברים שבכל יום, these things happen all the time.So he says over here, ולא ישיאנו עצה שאינה הוגנת לו, that you can't, this falls under הונאת דברים, to deceive someone is to give someone עצה which is not proper.
So he says, בזיונות כפועל יוצא של פעולת הכנסתו, נכנסים תחת הכלל של הונאת דברים לכל דעות הפוסקים. The פוסקים learn out from here that בזיונות fall under what's called הקנטה. What's falling under basically saying things which are really deceiving. Because you end up causing a בזיון to that person.
Where in the אמת, you really cause a בזיון for yourself. So the חינוך says like this מפורש in ספר החינוך מצוה תכ"ט: לשון ספרי, לא תונו, זו הונאת דברים. לומר שלא נחרף ונבזה בדברים וכל שכן במעשה. We have to make sure obviously with action you can't deceive, but even with words when you deceive someone, you're basically causing a בזיון at that moment.
You're disgracing. So we see over here that this בזיון, he continues with explaining what it means. שלא להונות אחד מישראל בדברים. כלומר, שלא נאמר לישראל דברים שיכאיבוהו ויצערהו.
Falling under the category of לא תונו איש את עמיתו is not just what we said before, but it's also telling him things which will cause him pain. Now how is that a deception? Because you may come like such a צדיק and say I'm telling you things that really it's for your benefit. And really when the person, what he's telling you is ripping into your קישקעס and making you feel awful. He says this falls under the same category.
שורש מצוה זו ידוע. The תיקון for this, obviously the שורש of this מצוה, לתת שלום בין הבריות, כי גדול השלום שבו הברכה מצויה בעולם וכאש המחלוקת. כמה קללות וכמה תקלות תלויות בו. So he says over here that the the מצוה of all מצוות is גדול השלום.
Now you can be such an ערום חכם and say listen, לשם שלום I'm going to go and rip into this person. Try to fix everything else in your life before you took this on as like הלכה למעשה that you know how to do this properly. Because when you cause a בזיון by acting like this, we're going to see in a second that this causes severe, severe damage. So first of all, we're not speaking about the person receiving.
receiving a בזיון. First we're talking about God forbid that you become the person that's causing a disgrace and an insult into someone. And we'll just say one more thing is that even though it's true that this is what's called a לאו שאין בו מעשה, which we'll probably talk about on a different day, which this is one of the חומרות that we say are not as bad as לאו שיש בו מעשה, a לאו that actually does have an action. The חפץ חיים says like this, על אז דברים, this is in שמירת הלשון.
על אז דברים, היא גם כן נכנסת בכלל לשון הרע. This deceiving, this causing a בזיון, this falls into the category of לשון הרע. נמצא שכל דברי הגנאי וכל העונשים המוזכרים בענין לשון הרע בתורה, בנביאים, בכתובים, בש"ס, במדרשים, בזוהר הקדוש, בספרי מוסר, ספרי הלכה, כולם חלים ותקיפים לגבי זה שמקניט ומבזה את הזולת. So he hasn't yet begun to explain what the transformation that a person could be going through when being humiliated.
But first he's being very clear as to what falls under this category. We should have a lot of סיעתא דשמיא to learn these הלכות, to learn this ענין gracefully, with a lot of patience. And חס ושלום we should never be on the end that causes a person to go through this נסיון. But if we do, God forbid, go through a נסיון like this, we should learn the tools and remember what's available for us at that exact moment, because like the זוהר הקדוש says, when I'm able to learn what to do, teach others what to do when going through a בזיון, and actually transforming myself, מובטח לו the greatest promises are waiting for a person like this.
רבי חנניה בן עקשיא אומר רצה הקדוש ברוך הוא לזכות את ישראל, לפיכך הרבה להם תורה ומצוות שנאמר אדוני חפץ למען צדקו יגדיל תורה ויאדיר. יתגדל ויתקדש שמיה רבה.