Midwest Book Watch
March 2008
By Fred Reiss, Ed.D.
New Year's resolutions about self-improvement may come and go, but the need for positive growth continues all year. Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar, by Alan Morinis, offers us a path to personal improvement based on the teachings of the Mussar movement. Mussar, also known as the Jewish Moralist Movement, gets its name from a Hebrew word found in the Book of Proverbs meaning discipline or conduct.
Mussar took hold in the late nineteenth century in Eastern European non-Hasidic, Orthodox Jewish communities, particularly in Lithuania. Rabbi Israel Salanter, inspired by the moral, ethical, and simple lifestyle of Zundel Salant, is often cited as the movement's founder. However, credit for institutionalizing the movement into the Orthodox community falls on one of Salanter's disciples, Rabbi Simcha Ziv. Others attribute the seeds of Mussar to the last century in the writings of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto. Still others, like the author, argue that its roots go back to the tenth century in the Book of Beliefs and Opinions written by Sa'adia Gaon.
Eastern European Jewish communities, during the late nineteenth century, were affected by the Enlightenment, and its corresponding Jewish interpretation, known as Haskalah. The freedoms associated with the Enlightenment, along with acts of anti-Semitism, oppression by the Czar, the ideas of communism and socialism, even the Zionist movement and the pervasive poverty in this region, caused many Jews to become disenchanted with the religion and abandon Judaism or convert. Yet, some of those who maintained the faith noticed the decline in the observance even among professed Jews of traditional Jewish law and custom, as well as the loss of the emotional connection to Judaism's moral and ethical core. The Mussar movement offered a solution.
The first part of the book gives an overview of Mussar's core beliefs. The author, as the voice of the Mussar Movement, affirms that each person has a central task in life, which he calls "our individual curriculum," and each of us is responsible for understanding and accomplishing that curriculum. Just as each person's fingerprints are unique, so according to Mussar, each soul is unique. Rabbi Salanter wrote that, "We see the affairs of man constantly vary, each person clinging to different transgressions…. No person is like another when it comes to transgression." Many things hinder us from completing our life's assignment, especially our own shortcomings. Yet, our negative habits can be transformed though personal introspection and by employing the body of practices presented by Mussar.
The second part contains eighteen chapters. Each chapter examines one of Mussar's inner soul traits (there are many more than eighteen, but he only spotlights eighteen) and suggests methods for individual enhancement of each trait. The definitions that we associate with Mussar's soul traits, which include such things as humility, gratitude, order, honor, enthusiasm, generosity, etc, are not necessarily the way Mussar defines them. However, according the Mussar Movement, understanding and applying these soul traits in our daily lives are so important, that they are, in fact, the keys to satisfying our curriculum.
According to Morinis, "unbalanced soul-traits act as 'veils' that block the inner light." An overuse of anger, per se, is not the obstruction to fulfilling our individual curriculum because anger is required in the face of injustice, but anger becomes an obstruction when the person lacks anger's balance. More importantly, the desire to improve is not necessarily sufficient because of our inner enemy, the internal voice that subconsciously subverts our good intentions. Morinis pictures the soul as the battleground for two armies. Territory behind one line belongs to that army and territory behind the other line belongs to the second army. As the inner struggle ensues, new territory comes under the control of one side or the other. For each of us, the battle lasts our entire lives and to beat that inner voice, Mussar suggests finding a mentor.
To help us with the inner struggle, Mussar offers practical suggestions to inculcate the soul traits and obtain a balanced life. Consider the soul trait 'Patience'. There are times when impatience is a virtue, such as the speed needed to save someone's life. However, for the most part impatience does not speed things up, but rather causes grief. "It's like an inner blaze that burns us up without giving off any heat." To help us become more patient, Morinis reminds us that God is patient and long suffering and he asks us to remember how the eons of time in earth's history demonstrate that progress is made in small increments, like the creep of glaciers. To gain patience, Mussar wants us, in a sense, to open the space between the match and the fuse. "It only takes a split second for [impatience] to ignite into flames that course through us… Impatience snuffs out conscientious." We react without thinking: leaning on the horn, yelling at the child, cursing the stranger. Mussar teaches that in these situations, we can choose to have patience.
One means of self-enhancement is by the practice of "witnessing and naming." Here it means sensing the first sparks of impatience and saying, "I am feeling impatient" or "There goes impatience." Once impatience is identified, Morinis wants us to shift the focus. In the game of life no one is the prime actor or victim. When we understand that we have so little control over anything, we can keep the wasteful energy of impatience in check. The Hebrew word for patience can also mean tolerance; to learn patience is to learn to tolerate.
The third part provides the exercises to help the reader internalize the soul traits. Mussar offers guided practice in three forms: daily, weekly, and yearly. The daily reminder is a personal phrase said from the moment one wakes up that alerts each person to the soul trait that needs improvement. Another is individual meditation through chanting and visualizations of those things that lead us toward self-improvement. A third daily activity he calls, "bedtime practice," which is writing about and reviewing the day's activities that show positive development in the desired soul trait. There are also weekly practice exercises, such as text study, where the individual reads a portion of a book by a Mussar author. Another is based on the idea that "we are what we receive." A diet of violent movies, Morinis assures us, leads one to violence. Mussar responds that we perform a weekly checkup to confirm that we are receiving the messages that support growth in the soul trait on which we are concentrating. Finally, there is the annual cycle, where we review our progress toward the improvement of the soul traits by reviewing all that we have written. Morinis emphasizes time and again that Mussar is not a quick fix to personal growth, but rather is the slow and steady use of guided study and practice to enhance one soul trait at a time.
In recent times, some Jews have looked eastward to find life's meaning in Asian religions and by relying on gurus and swamis. Others have looked for charismatic leaders of faith in America. Morinis shows that seekers of self-fulfillment need only to look at the ethical and morals within Judaism, as adapted by the Mussar Movement, to satisfy that need.
The Jewish Daily Forward
February 28, 2008
By Jay Michaelson
http://www.forward.com/articles/12792/
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.
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?
Mussar means ethics in modern Hebrew, which means ethicism finds its biblical origins in the word for rebuke or reproof, more gently defined as correction. This can be misleading, as the purpose of Mussar is to find spiritual elevation through the practice of Jewish ethics; ethics that have been taught for generations in Torah and Talmud study and interpreted by the sages in classic Jewish texts.
The modern concept of Mussar is rooted in 19th century Lithuania, when Jews found that the Enlightenment presented serious challenges to the beliefs and practices of traditional Judaism. Competing schools of Mussar developed but the Mussar movement is generally recognized as founded by Rabbi Yisrael Salanter and his disciple Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv.
What differentiates Mussar from other meditative traditions is that it asks the individual to work on the self, but for a higher purpose of living in the world and participating in tikkun olam (repairing the world). Once one has transformed the inner life, one is prepared to assist in the transformation of the outer world. This is done by identifying ethical modes of behavior and infusing each with a sense of holiness that leads to a higher spiritual awareness.
Alan Morinis writes beautifully of his personal journey to Mussar after experiencing several setbacks in his life. He shows how Mussar gave him meaning and purpose to pursue a new path. He leads us through various ethical traits such as humility, patience, and compassion, and shows how one can find inner peace and tranquility by the proper practice of these ethical behaviors.
This is a well written guide to a spiritual practice that individuals who are beset by the travails of our modern world would find meaningful and compelling.
Spirituality & Health Magazine
May/June 2007
The Jewish spiritual tradition of Mussar was developed in Lithuania in the second half of the nineteenth century by Rabbi Yisrael Lipkin Salanter. The word means “correction” or “instruction” and also serves as the modern Hebrew word for ethics. Alan Morinis has been a student of this path of spiritual development since 1997 and is also the author of Climbing Jacob’s Ladder, one of our Best Spiritual Books of 2002.
Morinis calls Everyday Holiness a handbook of Mussar for people of this generation. You don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate this way of refining and elevating your inner life and outward actions.
Mussar emphasizes such daily practices as meditation, silence and retreat, chanting, contemplation and visualization. The masters of this tradition also focus on the importance of the soul traits of humility, patience, gratitude, compassion, order, equanimity, honor, and other character qualities that are the sign of a true mensch, or decent human being. A simple (though often difficult) way to practice honor, for example, would be to speak only positively about others. A gratitude practice would be to express thanks to every inanimate thing that sustains you.
Morinis says that we all have traits that cause us to suffer and bring harm in to the lives of others. But we can balance these and come to see that even vices play an edifying role in our spiritual journey. There are three stages of Mussar practice: sensitivity, self-restraint, and transformation. Morinis also discusses the importance of the inner adversary, identifying our spiritual curriculum, and beginning a daily practice. Everyday Holiness is an exceptional resource, illuminating how true spiritual transformation can take place in our lives one day at a time.
The Dallas Morning News
May 12, 2007
By L. Edward Sizemore
For some, the title may be a bit offputting. I am reminded, however, of Leviticus 19:1-2, in which God tells Moses to command all of Israel to be holy.
This book is about the path of Mussar – often translated as ethics or virtue – which had its beginnings in the 10th century. In the earlier centuries, Mussar was a solitary search for holiness. By the 19th century it had become a social movement among the Orthodox Jews of Eastern Europe and served as a foil against the Enlightenment. By the time of the social movement, there had developed a thousand-year tradition and literature for Mussar (which relates to "tradition" in Hebrew).
Alan Morinis has studied Mussar with a rabbi and rebbetzin (rabbi's wife) for a number of years. His book covers the history and definition of the movement, then, in 18 chapters, deals with various aspects of the inner life, such as honor, silence, truth and trust.
The concluding section of the book deals with various practices and exercises that can aid the reader in bringing to the fore his inner light.
Publishers' Weekly
March 10, 2007
Morinis, director and founder of the Mussar Institute, summarizes the practice of Mussar "in the phrase tikkun ha'middot ha'nafesh—improving or remedying the traits of the soul"—while emphasizing that it is not self-help. Rather, "it means working on yourself, but not for the sake of yourself...but...to bring the soul to wholeness and holiness." Each of us is born with an inner soul that is irrevocably pure, but the outer layers constantly engage in the age-old struggle between good and evil. By determining our soul curriculum, or "issues that repeatedly challenge [us]," we can strengthen our souls and therefore every aspect of our lives. Specifically, he addresses 18 soul traits: humility, patience, gratitude, compassion, order, equanimity, honor, simplicity, enthusiasm, silence, generosity, truth, moderation, loving-kindness, responsibility, trust, faith and yirah (a combination of fear and awe, without a true English counterpart). In most cases the explanations are clear and delightfully illustrated with colorful Talmudic tales, though occasionally some traits, like moderation and generosity, seem at odds with each other. Early on Morinis explains that a Mussar book should be read "slowly, in little segments, so the material can be thoroughly absorbed and digested." So too, should readers of any religion take their time with this engaging tome of wisdom, lore and suggested practice.