Why is Musar--learning the works of Ethics of Torah important?

Why is Musar--learning the works of Ethics of Torah important? One reason is that often the very people that make their living by means of Torah can be the enemies of Torah.

The religious clothing and the whole song and dance about keeping Torah, can hide the agenda of getting naïve secular Jews to be slaves and servants and support of the patrician [morally-superior] class of the religious, [...that we secular Jews are just too stupid to understand or perceive. If only we would understand the moral and intellectual superiority of the religious we would just throw all our money at them and agree and acquiesce to subsistent on the bare minimum.]

That kind of thing can make it hard for simple people to learn Torah, and can take away the very desire to learn and keep Torah,-- i.e. by seeing the way the religious world is and acts towards baali teshuva [newly religious]. [And that is often atrocious.]

What does one do? I tend to say that Torah is important, and not responsible for those that misuse it. [The Romans even had a saying for this kind of thing, "Abuse does not cancel use." "Abusus non tollit usum."]

But that is not a really satisfying answer to this problem, since you assume that just learning and keeping Torah in itself ought to bring people to a higher moral level in which they would not be acting in such ways that clearly lack simple human decency. [Otherwise why learn it in teh first place?]

So it must be that there is something about the very way that they go about it is lacking some essential aspect. [Or that the religious are not in fact keeping Torah at all. Just the very opposite.]

This really great problem was addressed by Rav Israel Salanter in his efforts to bring the learning of Musar to people. 

While on one hand, this is a good answer for the problem--but not really all that powerful a cure. Mashgikim [spiritual directors of yeshivot] are often just failed roshei yeshiva that could not make the top grade, and so were appointed to be the spiritual directors.   

 And the further problem is that many people have found this kind of problem and their lives are destroyed, and yet have no shoulder to cry on since they are blamed themselves for what really lies at the feet of the religious world. 

From where does this disconnect come from? It seems to me that part of the reason is that a kind of force of evil got mixed up into the religious world. Something that the Gra tried to warn us about, but was not heeded. And that is found even in Litvak yeshivot.

What is the big deal you might ask? Because of something the sages of the Talmud said: :"The evil inclination abandons its attempts to seduce the while world and rest only on Israel. And then it abandons its efforts on Israel and takes itself to the Torah scholars." (That is to say that the very essence of the Dark Side is disguised in those that supposedly keep Torah).

[I am not saying that I am perfect in this regard. Rather that as well as I can keep the straight Torah path of the Gra all the better. And that I can wish that others might do the same and also pay more attention to the fact that he signed the letter of excommunication and repeated that fact several times afterwards, Showing that although we can not see this right off hand at first, still there is  a terrible danger that we may not see.]

 

My mistake was to leave the world of straight Torah of the Gra, Rav Israel Salanter and Rav Shach.]

Rav Shach does emphasize the importance of learning Torah and Musar.  And he was certainly not thinking about going to university, even though his son did become a doctor.

So I ought to ask forgiveness from people that read this blog that I do seem to differ on that point.

My excuse is that I did not fit in the yeshiva world. Even though I love Torah and agree with the Gra and Rac Shach and Rav Israel Salanter, still I simply did not find my place there. So more or less by force of circumstances, I had to go to major in Physics at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU.

But I regret that I was not able to learn Torah and Physics both. So I still try as much as possible to walk in this middle path of Torah with Derech Eretz [way of the Earth].   

So is that a thing to aim for? Or is it better just to sit and learn Torah? That is clearly still an unresolved question. Some of the great Litvak Yeshivas of NY do in fact aim for both, like Chaim Berlin and Torah VeDaat. Others like the Mir do not. The Mir aims for just Torah all day, every day. I have to admit that I tend to the more balanced approach. 

[I would like to suggest that the religious world suffers religious schizophrenia and from a kind of desire to become a patrician class [to rule over us low-lifes]. So learning Torah and competence in Torah is not the thing that they aim for, but rather the appearance of competence in Torah. So there is a large difference between the insane religious world and the sane, straight world of Litvak yeshivas. My mistake was to leave the world of straight Torah of the Gra, Rav Israel Salanter and Rav Shach.]

There was a mystic of the Middle Ages, Rav Avraham Abulafia

 There was a mystic of the Middle Ages, Rav Avraham Abulafia who held that Jesus was the Messiah Son of Joseph who was mentioned in the end of the Gemara Suka. I used to learn the micro films of his writings  before they were published by some fellow in Mea Shearim. [After they were published, I got involved in other studies.] At any rate, to gain some clarity about this particular figure, I asked Professor Moshe Idel at Hebrew University about him. [Moshe Idel  published lots of books about him and that strain of mystic thought.] 

The way I got interested in Avraham Abulafia was that he was quoted a lot by Moshe Cordovero and Rav Chaim Vital as for his system of unifications. But I see that his thought was really much more than that.

[This is not unconnected with Philosophy. The general approach of the mystics of the Middle Ages and the Ari (Isaac Luria) himself was Neo-Platonic. In fact, I had some difficulty in the problem of faith and reason until I discovered Dr. Kelley Ross of the Kant Friesian school [which is more or less based on Leonard Nelson]. Later I saw that Hegel also forms a kind of interface between these two approaches.]

Just because these strains of thought might be unfamiliar with people I think I should add one or two words to this note here to explain.

A basic problem about all of this is scientism. That is the doctrine that only what science measures can be true.  There is a lot more outside of science than inside science. So there is a place for faith. But faith is not flawless. It takes reason to be combined with faith to know in what should faith believe in.   

If you accept the opinion of some rishonim like Ibn Pakuda

 If you accept the opinion of some rishonim like Ibn Pakuda or the Rambam that learning ought to be in four divisions, Oral Law, Written Law, Metaphysics and Physics but you find that the learning does not come easily. The best idea is the saying of the words and going on without review until one gets to the end of the book and then to review again many time. This is in the gemara itself לעלם לגרס אנש אף על גב דמשכח ואף על גב דלא ידע מאי קאמר שנאמר גרסה נפשי לתאווה "Always one should say the words even though he forgets and even though he does not understand what he is saying."

[That is called "Bekiut." But review is also important. The question is how much emphasis to give to each part.]

Gra who is classified as a rishon

The climatic end of the Rishonim was the Gra who is classified as a rishon but yet comes later as a sort of seal on the period. And the significant thing about the Gra was the purity. He defines what Torah is about--even for us folks that are not on that level to fulfill any or even most of the details. That is why I recommend having a yeshiva on the name of the Gra in every city. This would have the benefit that even us common folk can have an idea of true and authentic Torah is about, even if we are not up to that level of being able to fulfill it.

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Rav Israel Salanter's and the idea learning books on Ethics.

 Rav Israel Salanter's and Musar [learning books on Ethics]. Learning the books of Musar tends to give a different impression of what Torah is about than what one would assume. Without Musar the tendency is to imagine Torah being about all kinds of things that it really is not. Even though that can exist even inside of Litvak yeshivas where Musar is learned, still the tendency is a lot less.

That is to say that Musar more or less defines the major emphasis of Torah as being about Love and Fear of God and good character traits. And it goes at length into defining what is good character. Since that is not at all obvious not easily apparent to pure reason, there is a need for Musar.

Why is it that Musar [books on ethics written during the middle ages] does a better job of this than later books is not clear, still the fact is that later books that are claiming to show what Torah is about are usually just examples of religious fanaticism and insanity, --the result of schizoid personalities. 

[Musar  refers to a small set of books written during the Middle Ages, but also can include the books of the disciples of Rav Israel Salanter or the Gra.] 

[The idea of Musar is predicated on the more general idea of Litvak Yeshivas that the Rishonim [medieval thinkers] define what Torah is all about.]