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Musar literature
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Musar literature is the term used for didactic Jewish ethical literature which describes virtues and vices and the path towards perfection in a methodical way.
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[edit] Definition of Musar literature
Musar literature is often described as "ethical literature." Professors Isaiah Tishby and Joseph Dan have described it more precisely as "prose literature that presents to a wide public views, ideas, and ways of life in order to shape the everyday behavior, thought, and beliefs of this public."[1] Musar literature traditionally depicts the nature of moral and spiritual perfection in a methodical way. It is "divided according to the component parts of the ideal righteous way of life; the material is treated methodically – analyzing, explaining, and demonstrating how to achieve each moral virtue (usually treated in a separate chapter or section) in the author's ethical system."[2]
Musar literature can be distinguished from other forms of Jewish ethical literature such as aggadic narrative and halakhic literature.
[edit] Medieval Musar literature
Medieval works of Musar literature was composed by a range of rabbis and others, including rationalist philosophers and adherents of Kabbalistic mysticism. Joseph Dan has argued that medieval Musar literature reflects four different approaches: the philosophical approach; the standard rabbinic approaches; the approach of Chassidei Ashkenaz; and the Kabbalistic approach.[3]
[edit] Philosophical Musar literature
Philosophical works of Musar include Chovot ha-Levavot by Bahya ibn Paquda and Hilchot Deot and The Eight Chapters by Maimonides.
[edit] Standard Rabbinic Musar literature
Rabbinic Musar literature came as a reaction to philosophical literature, and tried to show that the Torah and standard rabbinic literature taught about the nature of virtue and vice without recourse to Aristotelian or other philosophical concepts. Classic works of this sort include
- Ma'alot ha-Middot by Rabbi Yehiel ben Yekutiel Anav of Rome
- Shaarei Teshuvah (The Gates of Repentance) by Rabbi Yonah Gerondi
- Menorat ha-Ma'or by Israel Al-Nakawa b. Joseph of Toledo
- Menorat ha-Ma'or by Isaac Aboab
- Orchot Tzaddikim (The Ways of the Righteous), by an anonymous author
- Meneket Rivkah by Rebecca bat Meir Tiktiner
Similar works were produced by rabbis who were Kabbalists but whose Musar writings did not bear a kabbalistic character: Nahmanides' Sha'ar ha-Gemul, which focuses on various categories of just and wicked people and their punishments in the world to come; and Rabbi Bahya ben Asher's Kad ha-Kemah.
[edit] Medieval Kabbalistic Musar literature
Explicitly Kabbalistic works of Musar literature include Tomer Devorah (The Palm Tree of Deborah) by Moses ben Jacob Cordovero, Reshit Chochmah by Eliyahu de Vidas, and Kav ha-Yashar by Zevi Hirsch Koidonover.
[edit] Medieval Ashkenazi-Hasidic Musar literature
Chassidei Ashkenaz (literally "the Pious of Germany") was a Jewish movement in the 12th century and 13th century founded by Rabbi Judah the Pious (Rabbi Yehuda HeChassid) of Regensburg, Germany, which was concerned with promoting Jewish piety and morality. The most famous work of Musar literature produced by this school was The Book of the Pious (Sefer Chassidim).[4]
[edit] Modern Musar literature
Literature in the genre of Musar literature continued to be written by modern Jews from a variety of backgrounds. Rabbi Arthur Segal's :The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal: A Path of Mussar Transformation for the Modern Jew, (Amazon Press, 2009) is an example written from a Jewish Renewal perspective.
[edit] Mesillat Yesharim
Mesillat Yesharim is a Musar text published in Amsterdam by Moshe Chaim Luzzatto in the 18th century. Mesillat Yesharim is perhaps the most important work of Musar literature of the post-medieval period. The Vilna Gaon commented that he couldn't find a superfluous word in the first seven chapters of the work, and stated that he would have traveled to meet the author and learn from his ways if he'd still been alive.
[edit] Ottoman Musar literature
According to Julia Phillips Cohen, summarizing the work of Matthias B. Lehmann on Musar literature in Ottoman Sephardic society:
Beginning in the eighteenth century, a number of Ottoman rabbis had undertaken the task of fighting the ignorance they believed was plaguing their communities by producing works of Jewish ethics (musar) in Judeo-Spanish (also known as Ladino). This development was inspired in part by a particular strain within Jewish mysticism (Lurianic Kabbalah) which suggested that every Jew would necessarily play a role in the mending of the world required for redemption. The spread of ignorance among their coreligionists thus threatened to undo the proper order of things. It was with this in mind that these Ottoman rabbis--all capable of publishing in the more highly esteemed Hebrew language of their religious tradition--chose to write in their vernacular instead. While they democratized rabbinic knowledge by translating it for the masses, these "vernacular rabbis" (to use Matthias Lehmann's term) also attempted to instill in their audiences the sense that their texts required the mediation of individuals with religious training. Thus, they explained that common people should gather together to read their books in meldados, or study sessions, always with the guidance of someone trained in the study of Jewish law.[5]
Among the most popular works of Musar literature produced in Ottoman society was Elijah ha-Kohen's Shevet Musar, first published in Ladino in 1748.[6] Pele Yoetz by Rabbi Eliezer Papo (1785-1826) was another exemplary work of this genre.[7]
[edit] Haskalah Musar literature
In Europe, significant contributions to Musar literature were made by leaders of the Haskalah.[8][9] Naphtali Hirz Wessely wrote a Musar text titled Sefer Ha-Middot (Book of Virtues) in approximately 1786. Menachem Mendel Lefin of Satanov wrote a text titled Cheshbon Ha-Nefesh (Moral Accounting) in 1809, based in part on the ethical program described in the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.[10]
[edit] Hasidic and Mitnagdic Musar literature
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov's Sefer ha-Middot is a Hasidic classic of Musar literature.
The "Musar letter" of the Vilna Gaon, an ethical will by an opponent of the Hasidic movement, is regarded by some as a classic of Musar literature.[11]
[edit] Literature by the Musar movement
The so-called Musar movement encouraged the study of medieval Musar literature to an unprecedented degree, while also producing its own Musar literature. Significant Musar writings were produced by leaders of the Musar movement such as Israel Salanter, Simcha Zissel Ziv, Yosef Yozel Horwitz, and Eliyahu Dessler.[citation needed]
[edit] References
- ^ Isaiah Tihsby and Joseph Dan, Mivhar sifrut ha-mussar (Jerusalem, 1970), 12.
- ^ Joseph Dan, "Ethical Literature" Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 6.
- ^ Joseph Dan, "Ethical Literature" Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 6.
- ^ Joseph Dan, "Ethical Literature" Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 6.
- ^ Julia Phillips Cohen, http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=26171
- ^ Matthias B. Lehmann, Ladino rabbinic literature and Ottoman Sephardic culture, 6, 9
- ^ http://www.ou.org/about/judaism/rabbis/papo.htm
- ^ Shmuel Feiner, David Jan Sorkin, New perspectives on the Haskalah, page 49
- ^ David Sorkin, The transformation of German Jewry, 1780-1840, page 46
- ^ Nancy Sinkoff, Out of the shtetl: making Jews modern in the Polish borderlands, 136-142
- ^ "The Mussar Way", Mussar Institute website, accessed 11-22-2010
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