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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.
Okay, חברה, we have a few minutes of learning before we דאווען מעריב. And we're going to continue with the ספר that we started a few days ago, the ספר from Rabbi Brody about נפשי תידום, about the עולם of בזיונות, the world of of what happens to us through the through a בזיון, through going through this very delicate thing, which we've referred to as humiliation or being embarrassed by something, and to see a wonderful opportunity that we have.And I think that the best way to approach the beginning of this this world as an עבודה, as like literally to do something about it is the following. When something bad happens to you, there's there's two ways of asking the same exact question: why did this happen to me? And what's the two ways of asking the question? It's basically tone. Why did this happen to me? Or, hmm, why did this happen to me? It's just a matter of...
that's also dangerous. Huh? Both of those are dangerous. Listen, this world is dangerous. נוח לו לאדם שלא נברא.
Going through this world is dangerous. The danger is, because do you ever know? Does a person ever know for sure why? I think that's a very important thing I want to seem to ממש like before we go into the קישקעס of this very important teaching is that this is not meant to be thrown onto anybody else. You learn the תורה like this, you're like someone suffering and you go up to them and be like, hey, maybe it's because you were bad at this, maybe it's because you were bad at that. This is a personal reflection, an inner work.
There's nothing to do with anybody else. It's your own moment of like saying, I could be ממש really honest with myself and see what happens with me.So משה רבינו had the same had a similar question I think, after חטא העגל. Listen, after חטא העגל, what did it say about משה רבינו's leadership? What do you think it said about משה רבינו's leadership after חטא העגל? He could have said, God, why did you do this to me? Right? Meaning, how does your name become big from all this? Or, no, הראני נא את כבודך. There must be a place where your כבוד becomes bigger in the world through this.
And that's how the approach, the beginning of the approach in the world of בזיונות is הראני נא את כבודך. Show me how your כבוד is becoming bigger from this. Not as a חכם, like oh show me how you're great. A real sincere question of saying, what what really is what am I seeing that I'm not seeing right now? There must be something that I'm not seeing right now, because otherwise you wouldn't expect me to do any work with what's going on with me right now.
And again, we never ever know for sure why things happen to us. Sometimes you see the most purest, precious צדיקים, צדקניות that go through such torture, and they can do all the בדק הבית, which means like inner deep, you know, checking to see where they're holding, and they never, you could never you could never find out. But you got to להתאמץ. You got to at least try and seek inside to see, can I ask that question for real? You know, why what is going on here? What is what is happening with me? Why did this צרה come to me?So we're gonna go ממש like to the brothers a few weeks ago.
It says in the end of מקץ, ויאמרו איש אל אחיו, this is right after the goblet was caught by בנימין, and it's a great opportunity to play what we just said in in those פסוקים. The פסוק says over there, ויאמרו איש אל אחיו, אבל אשמים אנחנו על אחינו, אשר ראינו צרת נפשו בהתחננו אלינו ולא שמענו, על כן, על כן באה אלינו הצרה הזאת. What are they saying? We saw our brother when he was in distress and he was he was in pain, talking about the מכירה of יוסף, right? The selling of יוסף as a slave. And the brothers saying, אבל, and יהודה leads the way.
He said, and we and we completely ignored his pain. על כן באה הצרה הזאת אלינו. Therefore this צרה is coming unto us. That moment that that there's this moment of saying, you know, wait, wait a second.
What was going on internally when they were caught and they knew there's no, you know, there's no way בנימין was the one that... אין סיכוי. בנימין was the one that that stole the goblet. There's there's no מציאות like this.
They said, ah, because we're because there must be a מידה כנגד מידה over here going on. Because we saw our brother in distress once upon a time and we ignored it. Therefore we do the בדק הבית, we go inside, and we realize it's on us. And רבינו בחיי says like this on it.
He says, זה דרך הצדיקים, כשחוטאים מודים בדבר ומצדיקים עליהם את הדין. A צדיק, it's interesting, this is a very non-Lubavitch פירוש for צדיק. Why? Because it says here, כשהצדיקים חוטאים. So in Tanya, the צדיק doesn't really חוטא.
He's not one that sins, right? In the Lubavitch terminology. It's saying even the righteous people, right, when they are, when they sin, מודים בדבר, they admit it, ומצדיקים עליהם את הדין. מצדיקים עליהם את הדין is saying looking at what happened to them and said, yeah, this is this is right, this should happen to me. This should happen to me א' because השם made it happen to me, but I can say זה מגיע לי.
I need to go through this. מצדיק עליהם את הדין, כעניין שכתוב, אשם הוא, אשם אשם להשם. But דרך הרשעים שחוטאים והם אומרים איננו חטא. איננו חטא.
But a צדיק, but a רשע goes through life and something happens to them after they sin and they say, no, no, it wasn't a sin. You're perceiving it wrong. God got it messed up. A צדיק looks at what happens to them and he's מצדיק את הדין and the רשע looks what happens to him and he says, there's something wrong here.
Really I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't do anything wrong. So what he's saying over here, רבינו בחיי is saying like this is that really the צדיק understands that there's מידה כנגד מידה. I must have done something.
I don't know exactly what it is, but I must have done something that led me, that that led this situation in life to happen. What's the מידה כנגד מידה? What's the מידה כנגד מידה then? Ah, so that's this chapter. The chapter is 36 different מידות כנגד מידות actually. That's exactly what we're going to be learning.
There are and he's gonna we're gonna get there in a second. That's that's the question. Like what is the מידה כנגד מידה? So the מאירי says that he says a כלל, כל אדם שרואה, this is the מאירי in יבמות. כל אדם, כל שאדם רואה שצרות מתגברות עליו, יפשפש במעשיו הן יחיד הן ציבור.
צרות is happening to you, on whatever level it is, come, do go deep inside, whether you have to like do an inner check on an individual level or on communal level. It actually is amazing. Remember, what the first thing we ever did together was שבת of אחדות, but you want to explain why we did the שבת of אחדות? Remember what was happening in the ציבור? in Chicago? People were sick, there were a lot of צרות. There was tons of people that נבך were really, really sick.
There was some פטירות as well. There were other stuff going on as well once I found out once we got there to Chicago. This is the first time we had the זכות of doing anything together, long I don't know, maybe 12 years ago, 13 years ago, משהו כזה. You organized the שבת of אחדות, a bunch of communities got together to do some תשובה together, saying maybe as a ציבור there's not אחדות amongst us.
איי איי איי, do I know what's the מידה כנגד מידה? I don't know, but I have to do some kind of an inner work. I got to check inside. I got to look inside and see what it is. So רב ברוך דזשעלעצניק ממלדן is saying that anyone that's willing to go deep and to do a בדק הבית, to do this cleansing of the home inside of what's going on with them, בעומק הלב, in the depth of the heart, מובטח לו סייעתא דשמיא שהקדוש ברוך הוא יאיר את עיניו ויעזור לו לעשות את הדבר שהוא תיקון.
You have this extra help from שמים that they're going to say, ah, you're brave enough to go and see what needs to be fixed in you, we're going to help you. We're going to give you the flashlight. And we're going to direct you towards where you should be looking. You're going to hear from שמים, hot, hot, cold, cold, you know, you're going to hear, you're going to have some kind of a help from שמים helping you get there.
Now, we're not going to go through all the list, we're not going to even start the list today, but he brings down, remember this book was to help us take from all over חז"ל to see how we can attack this עבודה of becoming refined men through בזיונות. But he's grabbing from all over the Torah, all over ראשונים ואחרונים, and that's what this chapter is. And this chapter is 20 different בזיונות that are מידה כנגד מידה. And he divides them into two categories.
14 reasons of מידה כנגד מידה that has to do between אדם למקום, between where was I with הקדוש ברוך הוא? and six מידות, six reasons of מידה כנגד מידה בין אדם לחברו. Okay? So he's basically saying everything that you go through with a בזיון you have to connect it to something else that I have to refine in one of my… Well, he's saying it he's not promising for sure that you're going to detect it, but the עבודה is to try and see and he's going to explain why. He's going to say over here like this. He says… Huh? No, just great.
It's unbelievable. We know who wrote the ספר, so we know that he went through stuff so whatever he's saying, whenever I went through, it's for me to get closer to you the רבונו של עולם to be a better person. He looked inside. He didn't look, he didn't point fingers saying you you hurt me for this or I had to go through this.
I'm glad you're reminding us of this because that's דוקא why it should give us חיזוק to learn from this ספר specifically. Because this is like בדוק ומנוסה, which means this is someone that actually did what what we're talking about in this ספר. Okay? Without getting too much into whatever, you know, his own his own מהלך of life was with Reb Brody. he he's been there.
Been there done that. So the תנא רבי אליעזר בן יעקב in the משנה in אבות by רבי אליעזר בן יעקב it says like this. העובר עבירה אחת קונה לו קטגור אחד. Every time you go you do an עבירה, you acquire for yourself a persecutor, a prosecutor.
I guess it's a persecutor too. הקטגור הזה אינו אלא דין המתלבש באיזה צרה או בזיון. This prosecutor enclothes itself in a דין, judgment that enclothes itself through any צרה or בזיון or humiliation that you go through, and its מטרה, what's the purpose of it? to wake man up, to wake you up. The פיאסצנא Rebbe, זכותו יגן עלינו, writes this clearly in חובת התלמידים, that when a person goes through such a pain or a בזיון or a struggle or something very, very חזק, in the פנימיות ופנימיות of it, if they're willing to really listen to what's going on מאחורי הקלעים, behind the scenes, the פיאסצנא Rebbe continues says, you can hear השם saying, listen, I just missed how close we were to each other and this was the only way for me to get that closeness back.
That's what the חובת התלמידים is written, פיאסצנא Rebbe writes this. I said I just, I missed you so much. I missed how close, how close we were. Man's, man's natural tendency is not to cry out and cling to הקדוש ברוך הוא when things are good.
This happens quite often when we go through a צרה. So he's saying over here, that's really that's what happens to us after we do something wrong. We have, we have this צרה that comes to us to come and say, poke at us and say like, this is how we're going to get you to wake up. And sometimes without צרות, there's people can, people never wake up.
Things are okay, so I don't have anything that's causing me to wake up. And he quotes here from רב נחמן in ספר המידות, where he says כשאיזה צער בא עליך, תפשפש במעשיך. Any type of צער that comes onto you, if your initial reaction is who's fault it is, you're missing the whole point of what's going on with you. So listen, this is so much easier said than done.
This is like one of the easiest things that we could sit in a שיעור and be like, yeah, yeah, that's that's definitely the holiest thing. And that's why it's like if we're going to, if we're going to slap a תפילה onto this לימוד right now is to say, ריבונו של עולם, please let me have the guts to hopefully make that my, my טבע. My nature should become one that when I, I basically every time I get zapped, I don't go out, I I'm willing to go in and saying, okay, הנני. הנני.
I'm going to go inside. רבי חנניה בן עקשיא אומר, רצה הקדוש ברוך הוא לזכות את ישראל, לפיכך הרבה להם תורה ומצוות, שנאמר, ה׳ חפץ