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14.3.16

The issue of Ethics and Musar

The issue of Ethics and Musar was never emphasized in either yeshiva. Mainly yeshiva was for learning Talmud. Period. Shar Yashuv in Far Rockaway was not a Musar Yeshiva at all. Reb Freifeld did give talks once a week about world view issues. The Mir however was a Musar yeshiva but in a practical sense that meant learning Ethics 35 minutes per day. 20 minutes before the afternoon prayer and 15 minutes before the evening prayer.

But I was turned on by Musar. To me it answered some basic questions and issues. E.g what am I doing here? The reason is some people go to yeshiva for various reasons that did not apply in my case. I had a happy home. I was accepted into UCLA before I had gone to NY. There was no reason for me to be in yeshiva at all except one thing alone --the search for Truth.

So learning Gemara (i.e.Talmud) all day you can understand was a good and great thing --but it needed a context.

Why is it relevant?

Some yeshivas did not introduce Musar because I think they were afraid of spin. That is people going off into some wild tangent, as did happen with me.
But eventually the general consensus got to be to be  a kind of compromise--not too much Musar and not too little. And that is the basic approach of good yeshivas today.

And this is the approach I think is right.

What makes this difficult to advocate is the same problem you have with all institutions. Only the top ten percent will have any real quality. Everything under that will be pure bureaucracy of no value what so ever.