Mussar movement: Encyclopedia II - Mussar movement - Founders

Mussar movement - Founders

The Mussar movement arose among the non-Hasidic Orthodox Jews of Lithuania, and became a trend in Orthodox yeshivot (schools of Jewish learning). Its founder was Rabbi Israel ben Ze'ev Wolf Lipkin, the Salanter (1810-1883), who was inspired greatly by the teachings and Reb Zundel Salant.

Mussar movement - Zundel Salant

Reb Joseph Zundel ben Benjamin Benish of Salant (1786-1866) or Sundel Salant was a layman who had studied under Rabbis Chaim Volozhin and Akiva Eiger; he spent most of his life in Salantai, Lithuania. His profoundly ethical, good-hearted and humble behavior and simple lifestyle attracted the interest of Rabbi Yisrael Lipkin, then a promising young rabbi with exceptional knowledge of Jewish law. Lipkin absorbed the ways of Zundel Salant, and became the de facto founder of the Mussar movement. After tutoring Lipkin, Salant relocated to Jerusalem (then under Turkish rule), where he refused support from public funds and made a living in the vinegar business.

Mussar movement - Yisrael Lipkin

After establishing himself as a rabbi of exceptional talent early on, Rabbi Israel Lipkin soon became head of a yeshivah in Vilna, where he quickly became well known in the community for his scholarship. He soon resigned this post to open up his own Yeshiva, where he emphasized moral teachings based on the ethics taught traditional Jewish rabbinic works. He referred to his philosophy as mussar, Hebrew for ethics.

Despite the prohibition against doing work on Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath) Lipkin set an example of the Lithuanian Jewish community during the cholera epidemic of 1848. He made certain that any necessary relief work on Shabbat for Jews was done by Jews; some wanted such work to be done on Shabbat by non-Jews, but Lipkin held that both Jewish ethics and law mandated that the laws of the Sabbath must be put aside in order to save lives. During Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) Lipkin ordered that Jews must not abide by the traditional fast, but instead must eat in order to maintain their health; again this was done for emergency health reasons. By 1850 he left Vilna for Kovno where he founded a yeshiva based on Mussar, with a student body of 150.

In 1857 he moved to Germany, and by 1860 he began publication of a periodical entitled Tevunah dedicated to mussar. By 1877 he founded a Kovno kollel (adult-ed center of Jewish study). By this time his own students had begun to set up their own yeshivot in Volozhin, Kelme, Telz, and Slobodka.

He is widely known as Rabbi Yisrael Salanter.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Founders", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki