KEEPING SILENT VS. GIVING A SLAP

Like many others, I used to struggle with the famous advice of Rabbeinu in Torah 6: that the main way to do teshuvah is to keep silent when insulted. An obvious question is: if a person always keeps silent in such situations, just because they have never learned to stand up for themselves, how is it going to help their teshuvah if they do it one more time?

Of course, it's possible to understand this advice as only referring to keeping silent before Hashem, without making any attempts to rationalize away your wrong behavior, but I always felt there should be something more.

Then I learned that, after giving over this Torah, Rabbeinu said, "But there are times when you have to give a slap." And I realized that this answered my question perfectly. Just as matzah can only be made from grains that are capable of becoming chametz, in the same way, you can only implement Rabbeinu's advice about keeping silent when insulted if  you can give a slap but choose not to do so. But if you cannot give a slap, then your keeping silent doesn't really count.

So this means that an integral part of following Rabbeinu is learning to stand up for yourself. Maybe this is why Rabbeinu was so insistent that his chassidim shouldn't be "shlimazelniks".