The issue here is that the Conservative and Reform Movement have left the works of Musar and Medieval Jewish ethics in the hands of the Orthodox. This has given the Orthodox a monopoly in defining what Musar says. This was a bad mistake.

I would like to argue for a renewal of the idea of Israel Salanter about having a small Beit Midrash in every city for the sake of the study of Musar-Jewish Ethics.

But I am going to do this in such a roundabout way that it might not be obvious what I am advocating.



This one word made everything clear to me, but I realize it might not for people reading this blog.
So I will elaborate.

Classical Torah Theory as developed rigorously by Maimonides and the other Jewish thinkers of the Middles Ages is different in Orthodox Torah Theory. The area of difference is in Meta Ethics.

Orthodox Judaism today does not seem to have one theory of Morality but many. It slides between these theories seemingly almost at random.,- according to perceived interest of the group. The way it slides is by supposing that the many conflicting approaches do not conflict. But for lack of time I will not go into this right now.


 [To say things are good because God commands them means that mitzvot are arbitrary conventions established by God for no rhythm or reason. If so the Torah is not good. It is arbitrary]  Or because God is stronger than us and can punish  us if he wants to. Or that it is in our nature  But it is far from clear that we ought always to act in accordance with our nature. Suppose it were discovered that I (an aggressive male) am naturally adapted to fighting other people. I presume it will be granted that such a nature is possible--I could, for example, have naturally quick reflexes, physical strength, and an innate bloodlust; I might even have a naturally fearsome visage, suited to intimidating my opponents. Would it follow from this that I ought now to go out and attack people physically?





Now what I want to ask about this situation is, would Nazism be a good form of government, or would it still be bad? Surely this would be a case of establishing Halacha conventions according to which  Nazism  is good, if there were any such thing?  Yet here Nazism  would still be just as bad as it always was. The fact that something is generally practiced, obviously, does not make it right; that is why it always makes sense to doubt whether current practices are right. It always makes sense to try to establish better conventions, to find conventions good or bad, and so on, which it could not make sense if there were no possible standard of value independent of the conventions themselves.


On the other hand Classical Torah Theory as developed by Maimonides and Saadia Gaon [Ibn Ezra and many other Jewish thinkers from the Middle Ages] is very well grounded.
Their justification of Torah Morality is based on Aristotle and Plato. Saadia Gaon and Maimonides are from the Neo Platonic school (see chapters 3 and 4 from Emunot And Deot) and Ibn Ezra from  Platonism.
Whether in Plato or Aristotle Morality is objective and that is how the Medieval Thinkers understood the Torah to mean. as opposed to Orthodox Judaism today.  What I mean by  "objective" is that their truth does not depend on beliefs, feelings, or other attitudes of observers towards the things evaluated. This provides a reasonable interpretation of the notion of the objectivity of ethics. Assuming the correspondence theory of truth, this view entails values being 'part of reality' or 'part of objective reality.'

The issue here is that the Conservative and Reform Movement have left the works of Musar and Medieval Jewish ethics in the hands of the Orthodox. This has given the Orthodox a monopoly in defining what Musar says. This was a bad mistake.

But The Orthodox are right that morality in the area between man and man is not all what Torah is about.
There is the numinous aspect also. And in fact without this between God and Man aspect it is doubtful how far the moral aspect can go.
This is because as Israel Salanter noted many times we humans can only do good and act decently from a religious motivation., not from a moral motivation.

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

You have an identifiable population in the USA which is openly hostile to America.

Instead of spying on all Americans why not do the simple thing? You have an identifiable population in the USA which is openly hostile to America. They have openly declared war on the USA for all who have stopped to listen. Why not simply send them home? When has there been in history a nation has allowed it avowed enemies to remain in its borders?

My learning partner and I are having a debate about learning Jewish  ethics ( Medieval Books of Jewish ethics ).
He must have noticed my recommending learning Musar {Jewish Ethics} on this blog.
The first Musar book he was introduced to was the Orchot Tzadik. This provoked such a negative reaction that he actually said, "I hate Musar."   The Medieval Books of Jewish ethics gives--a coherent world view.]

The truth be told learning Musar has been a debate for a long time among Lithuanian sages. Volloshin had no musar sessions. Reb Chaim Soloveitchik was openly against the Musar Movement.
The Chazon Ish penned a great critique on it. He brought a case of when people in a  =city were all getting angry at a teacher of children that had come to the city when there was already a teacher there. the Chazon Ish talks about how they would get all indignant about "masig gevul Reehu" [infringing on another's territory.]
But the Halacha says  that the new teacher was right So what good is Musar with no Halacha?

In spite of all this, I still think Reb Israel Salanter was right because of one word "Paradigm." It is gives on the basic world view of Torah. This is not possible with just Talmud alone.


[Ponovitch where Rav Shach was he Rosh yeshiva learns Musar and he even has in his intro to the Avi Ezri some deep praise about Musar.]


Just to be clear: a lot of Gedolai Israel thought  it is best simply to be in a Lithuanian kind of yeshiva all day and by that good values and world view would be absorbed by learning Torah and by the effect of the group.  The reason my learning partner is not happy with Musar is he thinks it lacks insight and depth.  Who am I to place my opinion among these great people? But my impression is for myself that I need Musar and I also wish I could spread the ideas of Musar and Ethics around the whole world because I see them as being good for me and for others. One rav in Netivot said to me something along the lines once about people that don't learn Musar are like nightmares.{Or something like that. He is the rav in Yeshiva HaNegev over there, and we were discussing the issue of students. One student had come to the internet place in Netivot twice and was caught in the act and expelled. He said to me as he was leaving: "It is high time to join the IDF anyway." But in any case this incident got me discussing students with the rav and the subject of Musar came up.

[I can't account for the reason yeshivas tend to throw out people. Shimon Buso [the grandson of Bava Sali once said to me it is a אחריות גדולה לזרוק תלמיד a terrible responsibility to throw out a student]. David Bronson said I have nothing against throwing out students. The question is which students? The trouble is they tend to throw out the sincere and leave in the ones that are there because of "connections" and family relations. Almost as if they are private clubs and not real yeshivas for learning. I admit David Bronson's analysis of the situations seems accurate. I have personally had enough of the Ultra Religious, but my complaints come from more personal directions. I would go to a conservative or Reform synagogue but not the ultra religious.

The elderly lady turned Dirty Harry as she defended her home in Orange County, California, and her wheel-chair-bound husband – scaring off the 31-year-old assailant by firing a single shot from her .357magnum revolver as he tried to break through the front door.

This is a story about how owning a gun saved lives. The good guys are still alive and the bad guy is behind bars. Gun ownership is the great equalizer…. and these stories need to be embraced and celebrated often to combat and battle the liberal media gun-grabbing meme.

A burglar came in for the shock of his life when he burglarized the house of a 72-year-old grandmother.

The elderly lady turned Dirty Harry as she defended her home in Orange County, California, and her wheel-chair-bound husband – scaring off the 31-year-old assailant by firing a single shot from her .357magnum revolver as he tried to break through the front door.

A 911 call reveals Jan Cooper screaming ‘Back up you son of a b****! Back up! Get the hell out of here!’ before firing a round from the mighty handgun. It missed the burglar by just inches. [...]

Read more here. A FoxNews report offers more:

 Jan Cooper, of Anaheim, fired one shot from her .357-magnum Smith & Wesson revolver around 12:30 a.m. Sunday as a man attempted to break into her home. During a 911 call of the incident, Cooper can be heard begging with the dispatcher to send deputies and warns that she has a gun at the ready as her Rottweiler barks furiously in the background.

Minutes later, a breathless Cooper says the man has come to the back porch and is trying to get in the house through a sliding door. Through the vertical blinds, Cooper saw his silhouette just inches away through the glass as he began to slide open the door.

“I’m firing!” Cooper shouts to the dispatcher as a loud band goes off.

Cooper then curses at the suspect, shouting at him to “back up.”

Perez had a rap sheet that included other burglary and narcotics charges and was on parole and staying at a halfway house not far from the Coopers’ address, Amormino said. 

Learning Torah

The Gemara has a discussion if one fulfills the mitzvah of learning Torah by saying the Shema. It comes out that one does. It also says one should not tell this to  "ami haarez" [ignorent] least they learn to be lenient with this mitzvah.

On the other hand we know the Talmud Yerushalim in Peah says that one word of Torah is worth more that all the mitzvot.

This can be understood in two ways. This idea of one word of Torah being worth more than all the mitzvaot might refer to just the bare obligation. Or it might refer also to all the words of Torah one learns after that during the whole day.

Now we know that learning Torah during the day after one has fulfilled the bare obligation in the morning is not the exact same thing as doing a mitzvah that one is not obligated in. We do find in the Talmud that when one has a mitzvah in front of himself or learning Torah one should learn Torah. This seems as far as I can tell to the non obligatory of learning Torah during the day that one is morally obligated to do even though he has in fact already fulfilled the obligation by saying the Shema in the morning.
[This discussion shows why one must stop learning if a mitzvah comes up that can't be done by someone else. This is simple. Since one has fulfilled his obligation in the morning therefore any obligatory mitzvah that comes up later obviously one should do instead of learning]





Now on one hand they are right that everyone should learn Torah. But frankly I feel kind of like the German Jews that came to America that were based on the teachings of Shimshon Refael Hirsch--that they took an unbelievable degree of offense at anyone that even suggested that their children should not go to collage.

There was movement started by Reb Israel Salanter to learn books of Musar [Five books of Jewish Morality written by Medieval sages].
This had a core cannon of six books from the Middle Ages and one post  Renaissance book-the Mesilat Yesharim.The complaints about this movement were varied. The Chazon Ish asked "What good is Musar if you do not know Halacha?"

Clearly this is a good point but I have  a further complaint. What good is Musar if you do not know the philosophy behind the books? What I think is important about Musar  only comes because of the general paradigm of Musar i.e. it imbibes into tone the general world view of Torah.

Also I want to mention a few more flaws in the movement that should be taken constructive criticism not destructive criticism. Things that should be corrected to make the movement better than it already is. First get rid of all the moral busybodies



Second the are issues that come up in Musar that are not dealt with. The Ramchal emphasized learning Kabalah. The Rambam emphasizes learning Physics and Metaphysics [i.e. each on a set of books written by Aristotle]. The Ramchal puts down all secular disciplines  and is opposed to the Rambam in this issue. why are these issues not dealt with? and what about borrowing from Aristotle and Plato that Musar does but today this is ignored?

In spite of these complaints I agree that Musar is very important for religious and non religious Jews. We all need Ethics and to understand the basic point of view of the Torah concerning world view issues. Halacha gives us "Particulara." Musar gives us "Generala."