| Learning Musar [Ethics] has made me a better person. There was an implicit message in the Ethics movement of Reb Israel Salanter;. |
It was not that it is good idea to learn Musar [Mediaeval Ethics]. That was not news. The unstated message was that Fear of God is contained in the classical Musar book.
I do not think anyone ever expressed the idea in that way but it seems to me after I spent time reading the books of his disciples that this is what they were thinking.
That means they were thinking like this: If you want fear of God, then go through the entire set of Musar from beginning to end. That is a good deal of reading.
Why this is interesting is this. The more one fears God they he fears people or anything else. Nor does he have any reason to fear anything else. People I noticed can have fears that they are not happy with. Sometimes they know their fears are irrational. Other times they do have something real to be afraid of. Sometimes they can not tell the difference. It seems to me the best way to deal with this is to learn Musar.
