There is in the Jewish world an existing movement which was intended to be a mass movement but which never really took off.. It is the Musar Movement of Israel Salanter. It had two parts to it. One was the emphasis on every person to learn a cannon of five Medieval books about Jewish ethics. Another part of the movement developed with new books coming out by Israel Salanter himself and his disciples.
The Musar Movement is a very good thing.
But I also have complaints about this Musar movement
[1] There does not seem to be an Meta-Ethical Theory unless you count the books of Jewish philosophy from the Middle Ages..Maimonides and Ibn Ezra and Saadia Geon for examples.
[2] But if you include Meta-ethics then you are almost invariable trust into the world of Medieval scholastics which were not Jewish. If you ignore the scholastics then there is not possible framework to understand Musar expect as pure anti Rational fanaticism. Which is in fact how Musar is understood today.
But the lack of Musar in the Jewish world today means that Jewish people get their morality from whatever is in the air --the spirit of the times and try to find justification for this in the Torah, or they can the world view of hasidut. None of which is very Jewish. While many Hasidim are not insane, but the world view of Hasidut is insane and when people accept that world view it makes them slowly lose their morality and sanity
Hasidut does make great effort to look Jewish. Everything that is visible and public is emphasized. Jewish dress, and extreme observance of rituals that are public. This is good for public image. But Hasidut is a variation of th movement of Shabatai Tzvi. They simply took the basic ideology of Natan from Gaza that he created to justify the claim that Shabati Tzi was the Messiah and Divine, and they used that intellectual framework to say that their own leasers were of similar grandeur. In fact though Hasidut looks original when compared with Jewish books, in fact its entire intellectual structure is taken over from the movement of Shabatai Tzvi
The Musar Movement is a very good thing.
But I also have complaints about this Musar movement
[1] There does not seem to be an Meta-Ethical Theory unless you count the books of Jewish philosophy from the Middle Ages..Maimonides and Ibn Ezra and Saadia Geon for examples.
[2] But if you include Meta-ethics then you are almost invariable trust into the world of Medieval scholastics which were not Jewish. If you ignore the scholastics then there is not possible framework to understand Musar expect as pure anti Rational fanaticism. Which is in fact how Musar is understood today.
But the lack of Musar in the Jewish world today means that Jewish people get their morality from whatever is in the air --the spirit of the times and try to find justification for this in the Torah, or they can the world view of hasidut. None of which is very Jewish. While many Hasidim are not insane, but the world view of Hasidut is insane and when people accept that world view it makes them slowly lose their morality and sanity
Hasidut does make great effort to look Jewish. Everything that is visible and public is emphasized. Jewish dress, and extreme observance of rituals that are public. This is good for public image. But Hasidut is a variation of th movement of Shabatai Tzvi. They simply took the basic ideology of Natan from Gaza that he created to justify the claim that Shabati Tzi was the Messiah and Divine, and they used that intellectual framework to say that their own leasers were of similar grandeur. In fact though Hasidut looks original when compared with Jewish books, in fact its entire intellectual structure is taken over from the movement of Shabatai Tzvi
