Sunday, May 19, 2013

Mussar Movement was haskala - a man-based vision to revive religion

In my investigation into the Seridei Aish's description of the Mussar Movement as "frum haskala", I have come back to my original understanding. At this point I disagree with Prof. Shapiro that "frum haskala" simply meant concern with spiritual development and fear of G-d. 
The Haskala was a man based vision - not a religious one.  I just posted the Seridei Ish's vision of the Jew in the ghetto - not only was it repressive economically and psychologically but most found   religion also to be repressive.

Mussar was clearly a man based program to revive  religion as was Hirsch's Torah im Derech Eretz. It also involved participation in the world, tikun olam and an awareness of human knowledge and a focus on the individual human being. This is clearly the opposite of Chassidus which is a movement based on ruach hakodesh, revelation and Daas Torah and subjugation to authority. The Mussar Movement was also  opposed to the ghetto - either of the body or mind and deprivation of wordly pleasures and experience.


  1. "he Seridei Ish's vision of the Jew in the ghetto - not only was it repressive economically and psychologically but most found religion also to be repressive"

    And was this repression not man made? The Torah was to liberate us from the repression of Egypt, not to substitute one form of oppression for another.

    1. not necessarily. The claimed authority could be Daas Torah etc which is an assertion of Divine origin.

    2. And with what authority do you deny R Salanter's Dass Torah?

      Or to put it another way, when you make gezeiras that the majority cannot adhere to, then you get a rebellion. It has happened over and over again. Sometimes the rebels remain orthodox, other times not.

    3. Eddie would appreciate a source where Rav Salanter claimed the authority of Daas Torah?

    4. Does he have to claim it in order to be regarded as having DT? Did the Rambam claim it?

      Also, "Chassidus which is a movement based on ruach hakodesh, revelation and Daas Torah and subjugation to authority."
      That wasn't quite the opinion of the GRa, who said that the "revelation" from maggidim or mystical illumination was unreliable, and he refused to base halacha on unearned revelations.

    5. 1) Eddie I really don't understand your first point.

      2) It doesn't matter to Chassidim what the opinion of the Gra was. I was describing Chassidus from the Chassidic viewpoint

    6. The first point was regarding the authority of Daas Torah through the ages. Is this a special status, where a Rav or Gadol states that he is making a psak or statement through Daas Torah? My understanding was that statements made by Gedolim are accepted as Daas Torah, whether they invoke DT or not.
      A good example would be Rambam and his detractors, eg the Raavad. Where they disagreed, we still have to respect each opinion, although it is hard to claim that one or other side is Daas Torah.

  2. Please post here...answer to Ben on other thread

    From Insider:

    Every last fact is true. The parent called various people whom he had heard over the years were victims of Kolko. He confirmed it not based on heresay but based on actual conversations with actual victims. After Belsky issued the "intimidation" hazmanah, the parent send a letter to UOJ (the blog was watched very closely by MaRgulies and team) and the letter which described exactyl waht Kolko, MArgulies and Belsky were doing to him appeared as a headliner on UOJ!

    So Ben, to answer your question - the parent did go public!!!! If only there would have been perhaps another 10 or 15 parents who would have helped him. Instead, they all minded their own business.

  3. I am sure you are familiar with the multi volume work Tenuas Hamussar. Who of the many figures discussed there fit your description? Was the Alter fun Novahardok against depriving the body and mind of worldly pleasures and experience? In all the places where mussar prevailed they continued to learn and build on the classic works of mussar, the Chovas Halevavos, Rabeinu Yonah, the Mesilas Yesaharim. What did change is that unlike the talmidim of the Gra and of course the Gaon himself,they gave up the study of kabbalah. And this modernization emptied mussar of the possibility of depth just as it did with Rabbi S.R.H. In this regard you might want to look at the Yehuda Liebes articles on the Gra and his circle,available on line,and the new biography of the Vilna Gaon called The Genius by Eliyahu Stern.ej

    1. My focus is the Mussar Movement of Rav Yisroel Salanter - not how it developed with his students. In particular why the Seridei Aish described what Rav Salanter was doing as "haskala"

      Similarly there is evidence that Rav Salanter was interested in kabbala.

      what is the link to the article on the Gra?

    2. There are four papers here, I forget which comes first:

      Also here:


  4. I'm not sure the distinction you are making between the Musar movement and Chassidus(at least in it's earliest generations) is entirely correct. Both the Tanya(see the author's introduction) and the Likutei Moharanan seemed to view themselves as musar with the purpose of doing fundamentally the same thing as the Musar movement, to inject meaning into Judaism and thus revitalize it.
    The Baal HaTanya seems to indicate in his introduction that the problem with Musar is that it needs to be directed at a certain community, because the circumstances of one community will not match those of another. Hence he was writing musar for his community(which begs the question as to whether Tanya is as applicable to the modern Chabad movement, but that is another story).
    Likewise we could ask if Rav Salanter's methods are as applicable today as they were when he was giving them over. If we take for granted that he was trying to answer the problems of the vast majority of Jews who were excluded from the Yeshiva system in the shtetle. We live in a vast and different situation today, most especially in Israel.

    1. Good point. Actually the Seridei Aish asks the question as to what was the fundamental difference between Mussar and Chassidus.

      His answer was that Rav Yisroel Salanter tried developing a program of using the human intellect to outsmart the yetzer harah. He wanted to battle it directly. However Chassidus felt that the yetzer harah could not be successfully battled in a head on confrontation - simply because man wasn't smart enough. Therefore the main technique of Chassidus was to be so involved in doing mitzvos one did not have time to sin.

      Regarding your second point - yes times have changed - for Mussar and Chassidus. In fact it is clear that the extreme openess to experiment found in Rav Yisroel Salanter - disappeared in the next generation when Mussar became institutionalized and significant conflicts developed as to what was the "true" approach.

      Rabbi Friefeld told me that it was clear from Rav Yisroel Salanter's writings that he feld that there was little hope of bringing about needed changes in Eastern Europe. In fact he left it for Germany and France when he was 40 and spent the rest of his life there. He explained the reason as "when a team of horses is running wildly down hill - it is almost impossible to stop them. It is best to wait until they are the bottom of the hill to try and control them." In short Lithuania was a society out of control and needed to hit bottom before reforms could be instituted. In contrast Germany and France had already hit bottom and thus change and experiment were possible and could be succssful. This idea of a society being beyond hope of change is also expressed by the Meshech Chochma - which he attributes to the lack of Sanhedrin and Prophets.

    2. There is also some basis in chassidut for tikkun olam, trying to improve the world through one's own individual efforts, rather than simply through spirituality or following the instructions of a Rebbe.

      "Each person should say to himself: `The whole world was created only for my sake,' One should therefore constantly be looking for ways of improving the world in order to make up for any deficiencies, and one should constantly pray for the world (5:1)." (Likutei Eitzot, Tefila 9).

  5. The Chofetz chaim is also described as a mussar rabbi.


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