We continue in our discussion on humility and arrogance as it relates to Bitacho, based on the work of the Bet Halevi. The Bet Halevi quotes the Zohar, on Parashat Vayeshev , commenting on a pasuk in Mishleh 12, 9, ט֣וֹב נִ֭קְלֶה וְעֶ֣בֶד ל֑וֹ מִ֝מִּתְכַּבֵּ֗ד וַחֲסַר־לָֽחֶם ׃ Tov Nikleh/It's better to be light (i.e. lowly, or the opposite of honorable) and be a servant than be Mitkabed/honorable and Hasar Lechem/lack bread. What does that mean? Rashi says that simply, it means, It’s better to be lowly in your eyes and be a servant to yourself and get a job, than to be someone that's honorable in his own eyes that says, ‘It's beneath me to take a menial job. I'm too respectable.’ In the end, he is going to be lacking bread . He's not going to have food to feed his family, because of his arrogance. This is an important point- on a simple level, people's arrogance can sometimes interfere with their hishtadlut/ their efforts. You need to put time in, you need to work, and sometimes, that might mean doing something that's beneath your dignity. But your Ga’avah stops you from doing your hishtadlut, and therefore the person lacks bread. You might say, what about Bitachon? But that's not what's stopping you here. It's really that you're supposed to do the hishtadlut . Your bitachon requires that, but your Ga’avah is interfering, and that Ga’avah is going to cause you to be lacking. That's the simple explanation. The Zohar offers a very interesting explanation- It’s talking about the light person that's a slave to himself, versus the honorable one lacking bread. The Zohar explains that the honorable one, the Mitkabed, is an arrogant man. The Zohar says, this is a man that starts out making himself look good externally, stressing the way he looks, stressing the way he dresses, everything is about his external. He becomes an arrogant person, showing off, and that causes him to end up in trouble with sin. What would we rather have? Tov Nikleh -Better is the person that is humble, and in the end, when you're humble, Eved Lo/Your Yetzer Har will become a servant to you. He can't control you, as the pasuk says in Bereshit 4 regarding Kayin, ‘ And you will control him.’ You will control your Yetzer Hara, as God told Kayin, the jealous one who wanted respect, “ Don’t worry about it. You can control your Yetzer Hara if you are humble.” But the Mitkabed , this fellow looking for honor, this arrogant one, he's Hasar Lechem/lacking bread The Zohar explains that on a deeper level, it doesn't just mean lacking bread. It means he’s lacking Emunah, as it says, Lechem Eliyah/the bread of God . This man, the Baal Ga’avah, who's trying to show off and wants to be externally noted, is a man of lacking Emunah. So once again, we see from this Bet Halevi’s quote from the Zohar, how connected Ga’avah and Emunah are, The Zohar says it’s the Yetzer Hara that brings the person to do these external acts, that brings him to become arrogant, and to eventually be controlled by the Yetzer Hara. The arrogant man is controlled by the Yetzer Hara, whereas the humble man is controlled by Hashem, and controls his Yetzer Hara. So again, we see how impactful the middah of Ga’avah is in our lives. WB’Ezrat Hashem, we will continue tomorrow with some interesting points related to Ga’avah