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.

Musar (Ethics)

I want to defend the idea of learning Musar (Ethics).

Musar is as is well known to be not the same thing as Hashkafa (world view) issues. It is also not the same as Halacha (legal) issues. It occupies its own special niche.

 It is mainly about two sub-issues--Fear of God and character improvement.

It is hard to defend because of lots of reasons. We know that Brisk never became  a Musar yeshiva. We know lots of people, even mashgichim (מנהלים רוחניים), learn Musar and there is not apparent character improvement. 

Some people have been in so called Musar yeshivas and were not happy, and perhaps were even treated not well.

Still, I think it is important for its two areas of expertise, a) Fear of God and b) character improvement.
And I think that there is nothing that can replace its utility in these two areas.
What I mean is that sometimes you hear people saying other books have Musar in them.. They in doing this mean well, but are not really interested in what Musar is about.




Musar here refers to the basic medieval set of Ethics books, plus the books of the immediate disciples of Israel Salanter. [Isaac Blazer, Joseph Horvitz, Simcha Zisel, Naphtali Amshterdam were his immediate disciples.]

Appendix:
1) השקפה  world view issues are dealt with in books like Saadia Geon's אמונות ודעות Faiths and Doctrines. Also in the Guide for the Perplexed of the Rambam. It is a solid rule that only Reform and Conservative  Jews read these books, because everything in them goes against the insane religious world 's major tenets.
2) Musar and world view issues do intersect in certain areas.  Also Musar and the LM  do intersect in some areas. But what I am suggesting is-- that there are large areas where they do not intersect.
3) At least I want to suggest having the basic books of Musar in your home. I think where Musar is there is a invincible force field that protects the place.
4) The argument that Musar is a good and important and indescribably great thing would have to be based on my own experience and on what I saw in the Mirrer Yeshiva in NY and also on my experience with people that don't learn Musar. I don't think I could defend it based on some theoretical value, or insight it gives.