Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar
A Responsible Life: The Spiritual Path of Mussar
By Ira Stone
Aviv Press, 320 pages, $17.95.
How do you become a better person? A simple question, it would seem, but there are no easy answers — and no agreement as to which of the many paths toward self-improvement is most efficacious. In general, the mainstream Jewish path has been one of heteronomy: conforming one’s behavior to externally defined norms. Other systems, such as the teachings of Jesus and those of the Buddha, focus more on internally purifying the heart than on externally governing particular behaviors — some with an emphasis on self-love and affirmation, others on self-critique and self-abnegation. Well, the jury is still out.
Mussar, the moralistic movement within Eastern European Judaism that had its zenith at the turn of the last century, tends more toward the latter strains. It recognizes that, as Nachmanides (and Jesus) said, one can obey all the laws and still be a scoundrel (naval bi-rishut ha-Torah), and so it focuses instead on rectifying the middot, or character traits, from within. The general contours of Mussar practice are straightforward: introspection and self-accounting (cheshbon ha’nefesh) to determine where one is falling short, and a variety of techniques to improve one’s behavior, ranging from the mundane (such as repeating maxims of good behavior) to the bizarre (such as inviting ridicule in order to cultivate humility).
Perhaps surprisingly, Mussar, which in its extreme forms can involve asceticism, piety and self-abnegation — not to mention hyper-scrupulous observance of the commandments — has undergone something of a renaissance in recent years, prompting some to label it the “new Kabbalah,” i.e., the latest Jewish spiritual trend. Two recent books by two founders of new schools of Mussar illustrate the appeal, but perhaps also the shortcomings, of this old-new wisdom.
Alan Morinis’s “Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar” is a readable, engaging, friendly book — quite at odds with Mussar’s reputation for piety and, well, sourness. Morinis came late to Jewish observance and spiritual practice; his last book, “Climbing Jacob’s Ladder,” told his story of evolution from Rhodes scholar and Hollywood mogul to Mussar-practicing yid. While many such baalei teshuvah are overzealous in their observance and fundamentalist in their zeal, Morinis has maintained an even keel; he writes as one besotted with the Jewish path, but not so intoxicated as to forget the conventions of the secular. He’s an accessible guide, and a sober one.
“Everyday Holiness” is clearly written for the layperson, and much of the book has a familiarity to it that, to this reader at least, diminished the novelty (some would say weirdness) of Mussar practice. For example, more than half the book is devoted to enumerating 18 virtues on which one might focus one’s attention — an appendix to the book lists over 50 more — with the sorts of anecdotes and exhortations one regularly finds in self-help literature. Morinis is a better writer than most, and he avoids the clichés and tautologies that make much self-improvement literature insufferably obvious. But there’s little new here; don’t we all know that it is good to be generous, patient and kind?
Where “Everyday Holiness” excels is where it explores how Mussar is different from, rather than similar to, what we already know. Here, Morinis is again an affable guide, prescribing daily, weekly and yearly practices to translate the generalities of ethics into the particularities of daily life. For instance, he advocates selecting 13 midot and focusing on each for one week at a time — four cycles of the 13 each year. For each week, Morinis exhorts the reader to awaken with meditation or study on the attribute in question, spend the day increasing one’s sensitivity to it — both practices remarkably similar to Vipassana, or Buddhist insight meditation — and then end each day with a written cheshbon ha’nefesh that evaluates one’s progress.
I’ve not tried this practice at any serious length, and so cannot comment on its efficacy. Certainly, it seems valuable to focus one’s moral attention on a limited set of qualities, not least because it renders the vast task of self-improvement more manageable and defined — next week, I’ll worry about humility; this week, I’m focused on trust. It’s also doubtless true that any structured attention to one’s ethical habits is likely to improve one’s behavior.
Yet it’s hard to see Mussar becoming “the new Kabbalah.” For starters, it may be not spiritual enough for spiritual aficionados: It doesn’t bring about altered consciousness, doesn’t involve any esoteric wisdom and has few bells and whistles. It’s not even very Jewish; as Morinis notes, even its advocates had to sandwich Mussar practice in between the more normative activities of Torah study, prayer and observance of the commandments, and there is little distinctively Jewish about these ethics, as there is, say, about Kabbalah.
On the other hand, Mussar may be too spiritual for secularists: Given that Morinis focuses on secular values to the exclusion of religious ones (many Mussar texts are at least as concerned with scrupulous ritual observance as they are with ethics, but Morinis leaves those out), one wonders why Mussar is superior to secular forms of self-improvement, which come less freighted with tradition. If pure ethics is the goal, why bother with religious forms at all?
Of course, all this assumes that there is some zone of the “spiritual” distinct from ethics — which is precisely what Mussar aims to deny. For Mussar, spirituality is most centrally expressed in ethical action, in the “everyday holiness” we are able to cultivate in our exchanges with other people. It’s a noble belief; I just wonder who the audience is.
Ira Stone’s “A Responsible Life” is an almost perfect complement to Morinis’s book. Stone is literary where Morinis is accessible, biographical where Morinis is practical. And most noticeably, Stone is communal where Morinis is individual. In Morinis’s book, Mussar practice is essentially solitary — focused on diarizing, meditation, introspection. Drawing on different sources from Morinis, Stone advocates working with partners and groups who act as witnesses (and sometimes judges) of one’s behavior, creating an almost mystical fellowship of ethical rectitude. Stone leads such a fellowship in Philadelphia, where he is also a congregational rabbi. For him, the community is all.
What the Mussar circle does, in Stone’s depiction of it, is keep us honest; with witnesses, everything is out in the open. But while this can have a “feet to the fire” quality, it is actually not so different from the contemporary practice of “co-counseling,” in which laypeople counsel one another, offering not analysis or advice but simply a listening presence. There are no experts, no leaders — as soon as one partner is finished speaking, the roles switch and the listener becomes the talker. The effects can be quite powerful — and empowering, as the work is accomplished without therapists, fees and professional offices.
Frustratingly, Stone’s book gives precious little direct advice beyond “find yourself a partner and a community” to those wishing to take on Mussar as a personal practice. Perhaps this is because the particulars, as Morinis also notes, will of necessity be different for each person (I may need to work primarily on anger, someone else on laziness or deception). Or perhaps it is because Stone is more interested in describing what Mussar is (his book has more material on the history and key figures of the movement), while Morinis focuses on “how it can work for you.” Whatever the reason, one can finish “A Responsible Life” without knowing exactly what to do next.
The great gift of Mussar lies less in its enumeration of the virtues than it its distinctive technologies of cultivating them. Perhaps not all of us, but certainly most of us by a certain age, know the traits to which we ought to aspire. The question is how to do it, how to translate whatever our values are into the lives that we actually live.
To this question, Mussar provides a clear answer: Look closely at yourself, and set yourself a discipline of watchful self-accounting, as rigorous and serious as your diet, your work schedule or your regimen of physical exercise. Take ethics at least as seriously as you take Pilates.
Surely this is a salutary message for our times. Yet if we 21st-century Americans tilt too far in the direction of moral laziness, many of us also tip too far in the other direction: toward too much self-criticism, self-judgment, even self-hatred. Aware of the tendency for Mussar practice to turn to unhelpful self-abnegation — beating one’s heart just a bit too hard on Yom Kippur — both Morinis and Stone are careful to praise moderation and condemn self-loathing.
But for this reader, the larger question is still open. Enumerating virtues, measuring behavior and recording where one falls short seem, by all accounts, to work. Yet what if we were to believe that improving the self came not from measuring and accounting, but from loving, from cultivating joy, loving-kindness and generosity in an open and loving heart? It’s a myth that self-love leads to narcissism; overindulgence comes from loving oneself too little, not too much. Real spiritual work inexorably leads to ethical action, as in the supposedly world-disregarding Buddhist monks who at the time of this writing are leading a mass, nonviolent protest movement in Myanmar. Might it not be better to love, first and foremost, and leave the counting behind?
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Mussar is an ethical tradition in Judaism that goes back to Talmudic times (see Pirkei Avot, the Ethics [or Sayings] of the Fathers), and farther than that, to the Book of Proverbs and the Torah (as in, "love the stranger in your midst," etc.). But it is not just self-help; like Kabbalah, it is meant to be used in the context of a whole system of Jewish living, not plucked out from the soil from which it emerged. The founder of the 19th century mussar movement, R. Israel Salanter, was trying to teach this method -- which originated with R. Mendel Lefin who adapted it, believe it or not, from Benjamin Franklin -- to Jews who were falling away from observance. It was meant to keep Jews on the path of halakhic living, to help them understand that they didn't have to "modernize" a la Reform in order to concentrate on ethics. Mussar was not about making people feel better about themselves in the modern, self-indulgent, self-help sense. As for mussar not being "spiritual" enough: Try focusing on one of these characteristics and keep your attention on it every day for a week. It'll shift your consciousness, just like any meditation work. By the way, why choose between love and accounting? Why not do both? That way, when you're not in the mood to love yourself or others, you're prepared to be disciplined enough to do it anyway.
I had to smile at the coincidence. This week I uploaded an article about Mussar, including an interview with Alan Morinis, to my website, The Jewish Angle. It suggests that this is a corner of Judaism that has been overlooked by the mainstream and, like kabbalah most recently, is ripe for rediscovery.
I've seen Alan Morinis speak a few times and read both his books. I agree with Jay that, often, Mussar seems little different from personal development in a purely secular, non-Jewish context. But so what? This only means that personal development makes sense in both contexts. In "Stalking Elijah" Roger Kamenetz points out that modern Jews want techniques for personal development in a Jewish context. Alan's Mussar teaching seems to me to be one way of providing it and, this is serious business because if Jewish teachers don't offer the average person a readily accessible path to personal or spiritual) growth, they will obviously look elsewhere for the same thing.
Aside to the journalist Jay, in your puzzling about why study mussar rather than do something less "spiritual" and more practical like protest and social action: As RamChaL said, the point of mussar is to build character so that when one enters the spiritual, the paRDeS, Orchard of HaShem, one does not harm themselves or others. Without character growth, it's possible as the Zohar story goes to die, go mad or apostate like the 3 sages who didn't make it out when they entered the orchard of Gd. With adequatly transformed ego structures, it is possible to a)practice Devakut and get out alive like Akiva in the previously mentioned story and b) draw on those deeper places to be able to be more effective and powerful with any action. The end is not the mussar, the mussar is the corridar to the room where you want to be. - from Path of the Just, Moshe Chaim Luzzatto
No, Mussar is the old Kabbalah and the only Kabbalah. The Prophets knew no other way. Lurianic pseudo-Kabbalah is a heresy based on ancient mystery cults. Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
mussar is a system of self discipline on how to imporve one's relationship with oneself and with god.mussar can only be appreciated while being practiced along with halachah(jewish law).It can not be used as a seperate thing unto itself.mussar is not about self help and mere "ethics". mussar is about improving oneself not because you want to be a better person but because god DEMANDS that we work on ourselves to become better people both in realation to him (i.e.observing the commandments of jewish law scrupulously)and in realation to other people(i.e. the commandments of jewish law on how to treat other people aswell as improving ourselves to become more loving,honest,hardworking,etc).These books are not true mussar literature as theire central aim is not about the service of god but rather about turning an ancient jewish discipline into something detached from holiness. If you are not jewish than mussar is NOT FOR YOU!Go be a good budhist or devoted christian or something but stay away from mussar and kabbalah.If you are not jewish and engage in mussar and kabbalah i PROMISE that you will not gain A SINGLE THING FROM IT!
After the second WW, one thing remained which led me to judaism: ethics. Ethics are both separate and deeply connected to belief. Turning to ethical life brought me closer to judaism. Ignorance of what is good is what created distance. e.g. I found out that the allergies of my daughter were diminished by eating kosher. I've gained much by engaging in Mussar when I got a severe mental illness. I'm a mother of 5 and was able to hold on, to function and stay positive through the discipline of staying focussed on the middot. Mussar raised my curiosity about middot and led me to study, wanting to know more about the spiritual concepts that inspire Mussar.
Mussar is an interesting subject of study. It has the power to free a person from fear, unhappiness, anger, envy, and all the other negative character traits. At the same time, one who is able to internalize Mussar will achieve true happiness. It is truly powerful.
From the time I have spent studying Mussar from texts like 'The Path of the Just' and Pirkei Avos, I have learned a few key elements necessary to really learning and internalizing Mussar: 1) Mussar has to be reviewed constatly. It is not enough to learn it once, rather it mut be learned again and again. 2) Mussar must be learned with the proper intent. One must be honest and receptive to the teachings in Mussar or it will not penetrate the reader. 3) Mussar is best learned with a study partner or a mentor. A partner will help you stay motivated when you get discouraged. A mentor will be able to explain some of the more difficult concepts to understand.
In regards to learning Mussar in a non-spiritual context I don't think that works because of the nature of humans. In 'The Path of the Just', the author clealy states that humans contain both a spiritual component and a material component. To leave out learning about the spiritual component of man is reading only other page of a book. You might get something out of it, but not as much if you read the whole thing.
I hope, my comments help.