Q:
What is considered to be a broken spirit, like it says Hakodosh Boruch Hu prefers a broken spirit?
A:
Now it doesn’t mean what people call a broken spirit. A broken spirit is no good. A broken spirit is a person who says, “What difference does it make?” like Eisav said, “הנה אנכי הולך למות.” And therefore when a person has such a broken spirit, he’s a customer, he’s a candidate to do big aveiros. When a person is discouraged and depressed, he can do the worst kinds of sins that he never would have done normally. That’s not a broken spirit.
A broken spirit means when a man breaks his desires. He does it happily. Like Avrohom took a hammer and smashed his father’s idols, he wasn’t depressed. He did it with simchah. Smash, he hit the idol on the head and he broke off his nose, he crashed in that clay skull. He did it with fun. He enjoyed it.
When a person breaks his yetzer, that’s a broken spirit. That’s what he means. That’s the only pshat. You break your ka’as.
Let’s say you’re angry against somebody, angry against a neighbor, angry against a chavrusah, you’re angry against your wife and you break your spirit. You say, “No, I’m going to break it.”
Ah! You have to know what it means.
Rabbeinu Yona says, “תַּאֲוָה נִהְיָה תֶּעֱרַב לְנָפֶשׁ.” He teitches “nehiyoh” as broken. A broken taaveh is sweet for the soul. That kind of a broken spirit Hashem desires. Break your gaaveh. You think you’re a big man. Look, so many people know more than you, so many people are better than you and you break your pride, your arrogance, that’s a broken spirit.
But don’t make the mistake of thinking that this broken fellow who comes in the back seat here, I don’t mean you, I mean the other one over there and he takes the back seat because he thinks he’s a nobody and he’s a failure, no, that’s not a broken spirit, the man who thinks he’s a failure.
Chovos Halvovos says it’s a beheimeh. He’s a big ox. The ox doesn’t know how strong he is, he’s a broken spirit and a little sheigetz can hit him with a stick and drive him. That’s a broken spirit? No, no, that’s a beheimeh spirit! A broken spirit is Moshe Rabbeinu who knew how great he was. He knew that לא קם עוד נביא כמהו and still he was an anav because he broke his gaaveh with the bechirah, with koach he broke it, that’s called a broken spirit.
So anybody who’s discouraged is not a broken spirit. He’s a broken man. A broken spirit is a person who knowingly, consciously breaks one of his yetzer, a yetzer of laziness, a yetzer of anger and so on.
(April 1980)
