Why His Name Was “Navel”:
A man who was a big talmid chochom and lamdan once came to visit the Chiddushei Harim zy”a. The Chiddushei Harim told him some chiddushei Torah, and the scholar tried to refute his ideas through various questions. The Chiddushei Harim remained silent and did not attempt to answer the questions, and it looked like he was admitting that he was wrong.
The chasidim who heard the conversation went and learned the sugya, and clearly saw that the Chiddushei Harim had been correct and the visiting talmid chochom was mistaken. They approached their Rebbe and asked, “Why were you silent? Why didn’t you answer his questions“?
The Chiddushei Harim answered, “I knew he was wrong but I did not want to embarrass him by pointing out his errors.” The chasidim then went to that talmid chochom and showed him how he had been wrong and what his mistake was. He immediately ran to ask forgiveness from the Chiddushei Harim, who told him, “There were many musical instruments in the Bais Hamikdosh. One of the them was the ‘nevel’ (flute). The Yerushalmi (Sukkah 5:6) states: ‘Why was it called a ‘nevel’? Because it embarrassed the other musical instruments. The Korban Ha’eida explains that it produced such a sweet, beautiful sound that it shamed the other instruments.
This leads to an obvious question. Why would such a beautiful sounding instrument be called by this name? The answer is that it has this name to teach us an important lesson. A person can be very great, but if his greatness causes others to be embarrassed, he is a ‘nevel’. He is considered to be a disgusting person.”
