I want to speak to you tonight about a tale of two Slabodkas.
There was a Yeshiva in Slabodka, which split due to a controversy over
the study of Musar, which focused on improving character, piety, and ethics.
The Musar controversy seems extremely strange. Why would a movement
dedicated to spiritual growth engender a battle that lasted over 30 years?
And in its most shocking moments, in 1904 and 1905, during
revolutionary years in Russia, an anti-mussar student pulled a gun on the
Mashgiach in the Slabodke yeshiva, and another group of students took all the
mussar books and threw them into the sewage filled latrines.
But this controversy began with a debate between great rabbis. When a
leader of the Musar movement, Rabbi Isaac Blazer, went to visit the Volozhin
Yeshiva in 1882, he was prevented from speaking by Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik.
The height of the controversy occurred in the years 1896 and 1897,
when the Yeshiva of Slabodka split.
What was once one Yeshiva became two. The mussar one, led by the Alter
of Slabodka, Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, was called Knesset Yisrael, and the other,
non-mussar one, was Knesset Beit Yitzchak.
Now to many of you Slabodka may be an unfamiliar name. It is a suburb
of the city of Kovno (Kaunas) in Lithuania. But these Yeshivot are the father of most modern Yeshivot.
Ner Israel Rabbinical College in Baltimore was started by a student of
Slabodka, Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchak Ruderman and named after Knesset Israel.
And other Yeshivas like Chofetz Chaim, Mir, Chevron are direct
descendants of the Knesses Yisroel Yeshiva.
What caused this rift? As Rav Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg notes, it seems
strange to disagree about Musar, which is the spiritual equivalent of apple
pie.
The Musar movement began with an intellectual giant, R. Yisroel
Salanter.
To underline what a brilliant mind he had, Rav Weinberg recounts a
story about one lecture. Like many Rabbis of the time, R.Yisrael would
generally send ahead his sources for each lecture to have them posted on the
bulletin board of that synagogue. Someone who opposed R. Yisrael decided to
play a prank on him; and the prankster took down the sources R.Yisrael had
sent, and put up a random list of other sources.
When R. Yisrael arrived at that synagogue, he stood for a few minutes
looking at the new list. And then he began a lecture utilizing all the sources
the prankster had written out. Such was the brilliance of Rav Yisrael's mind.
Yet what Rav Yisrael worried about most was a general failing of
character.
One story R. Yisrael would tell, was about a Yom Kippur eve. A man was
praying and saying the al chet prayer. Al Chet is a list of every possible sin,
some quite remote, written to insure that everyone's confession on Yom Kippur
is thorough. This man was saying Al Chet with incredible intensity, with tears
coming down his eyes. Rabbi Yisrael approached the man, hoping to pray along
with him in this moving prayer. But when Rav Yisrael came near, the man violently
pushed him away!
As Rabbi Yisroel would put it, the man was crying about sins he never
committed, and he was crying about this man, who had entered Yom Kippur and had
no idea what it was all about.
But Rav Yisrael felt that Book study of Musar was not enough.
Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg notes, many decades before Freud, Rav
Yisrael Salanter understood the workings of the human unconscious.
And for this reason Rav Yisrael recognized that there needed to be
both an immersive technique, that was deeply emotional. I'll just note in
passing some of the methods the Musar movement used.
● A separate Musar
house
● intense inspirational talks
● deep self
criticism
● repetition of phrases
● making oneself
emotional before studying musar
● and thinking
about one's ultimate death.
But let’s return to the question: what could be wrong with this method
of spiritual growth?
Actually, the opposition to
Musar had bubbled under the surface for nearly 40 years.
People were unwilling to oppose it openly because both Rabbi Salanter
and the Chief Rabbi of Kovno, Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spector, supported and
protected those who studied Musar.
But after they both passed away, the opposition came forward.
It was signed by 9 Rabbis, including the son of Rabbi Yitzchak
Elchanan, Rav Tzvi Hirsch Rabinowitz.
There are several arguments mentioned.
One is that the Musarites were seen as schismatic. Lithuanian Jewry
was deeply opposed to Hasidism, and now they believed they were seeing a repeat
of that movement.
And the Musar students acted weirdly. The opening of the Novardok
Musar Yeshiva brought with it a strange way of doing Musar. Students would
actually act strangely, to invite the insults of others; the point of this was
to give the musar students a stoic detachment, and a willingness to do what is
right no matter what other people say. But to outsiders, this was bizarre.
Even in an ordinary Musar Yeshiva, very often students would
continually meditate on one phrase repeating it over and over out loud. This
too seemed incredibly strange.
There was also the sense that those who studied Musar, even those who
knew very little in terms of Torah, would look down on great scholars. And the
feeling was that this secret arrogance was pure hypocrisy. The accusation is
that they turned their outward piety into a way to act superior to others.
There is a well known joke from the opponents of Musar, in which a new
student joins the Yeshiva, and everyone sits down in the Beit Midrash to study
Musar on their own.
All of a sudden, the two most senior students break out in tears and
say with all humility: ich bin a gornisht - I am a nobody!
The new student figures this is the way things are done, so he too
calls out “ich bin a gornisht - I am a nobody”. Seeing this, an older student
turns to his friend and says: “look who thinks he’s a gornisht - a nobody!
The suspicion was that Musar piety was hypocritical, and that the
students would carefully check who was a bigger nobody than the next!
The other concern was that this would lessen the study of Torah. For
Lithuanian Jewry, the theology of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin was paramount. He saw
Torah study as the ultimate goal of religious life. In his commentary to Pirkei
Avot, Rav Chaim of Volozhin says that the amount of musar you need a day is 5
minutes for 15 hours of Torah study.
And this last accusation is
quite possibly the center of the dispute.
In this week’s Torah reading, there is a verse that says “Kedoshim
Tihiyu” you should be holy. But how do
you define being holy?
To the Rashbam, this simply means: keep all the commandments about to
be listed in the next section, and you will be holy. This is very similar to
the Volozhin view: Torah at the center. Keep the Torah and you will be holy.
But the Ramban sees holiness as going beyond what the Torah says. You
must develop goodness and character. The Torah is merely a framework; One must
develop their character beyond the basic responsibilities of the commandments.
And it is this message the Musar movement adopted, and it was
revolutionary. They saw creating a complete human being as the ultimate goal.
For an educational purist, this was unacceptable. The entire goal of
Judaism is the study and performance of Torah.
Studying Musar would not only take time out of the daily schedule, but
it would also displace Torah as the most important goal.
Now it is easy for us to sit in our armchairs and take the side of
those who studied Musar. Choosing character over scholarship would seem simple.
But We need to recognize that we actually pay lip service to character
most of the time, and need to reflect on what choices we make in our own lives.
Would we be willing to sacrifice our children getting into an elite
university so they could spend more of their time developing their character?
When I speak to high school students, I tell them that it is far more
important to be a good person than get into a good university. But if we are
honest, that is not an easy choice for any of us.
It was that type of choice that the Musar movement was demanding. You
can't always have it all.
Rabbi Yisrael was saying he would rather have less scholarship and
more character. And that was revolutionary.
Rabbi Yisroel's revolution upended the way people saw things.
He placed great emphasis on interpersonal commandments, both because
he perceived that people were far more interested in ritual commandments and
ignored the interpersonal ones; and because interpersonal commandments demanded
a well-developed personal character.
He would instruct his students that the most important religious
stringency in producing Matzah for Passover is to make sure that the widows
employed in the Matzah bakery are treated with dignity, and never shouted at
them during the baking process.
When the Cholera epidemic arrived in Vilna in 1848, the story that Rav
Yisrael is best known four is making kiddush on Yom Kippur, to encourage
everyone to follow his example and eat. But more dramatically, Rav Yisrael
turned his Beit Midrash into a makeshift hospital to care for those who are
sick, and told his students to leave Yeshiva and help others.
We live in a time where Rabbi Israel's legacy seems more relevant
every day.
The importance of compassion and the importance of building character
are critical in these days of stressful isolation. We are looking for ways to
teach ourselves and our children to develop the virtues of dedication,
optimism,and courage. We need to bring back Rav Yisrael!
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