Aspaqlaria

One of the more amazing pieces of history of the Mussar Movement was that Rav Yisrael Salanter, despite his own antipathy for Haskalah (Enlightened Judaism), promoted a seifer written by a maskil, Rabbi Mendel (Leffin) Satanover. Admittedly, Reb Mendel Satanover was from the early Haskalah and was himself a fully observant Orthodox Jew. However, if you think of how Orthdox history portrays Moses Mendelsohnn, about whom the same could be said, and Rav Yisrael’s embracing and republishing R’ Mendel’s “Cheshbon haNefesh” is astounding.

More so, Rav Yisrael Salanter must have been aware of the book’s original source. Cheshbon haNefesh describes a particular way to keep a mussar journal, keeping track in one’s progress in various middos. This format is seasonal, 13 middos to work on each season, and each week of the season focus is placed on one of those 13. One therefore maintains each week a 13×7 graph, one direction marking off the days of the week, the other marking off that season’s middos, creating boxed in which marks can be made counting incidences of success or failure at each middah.

The plan is taken from Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. Malcolm Shosha posted the relevent chapters to Avodah, here. The differences are twofold. First and more fundamentally, Franklin intended to create a list of virtues. R’ Mendel Satonover is clear that he is offering 13 sample middos to demonstrate the principle. And although he dicusses each of the 13 at length, at the end of the book he has a short list of other possibilies that someone they may find they have to work on.

Despite this, it appears that there was a tradition that Rav Yisrael Salanter considered a list of 13 middos, 12 of them the same as in Cheshbon haNefesh, to be the primary ones to attend to. They are listed as such by Rav Barukh Epstein, author of the Torah Temimah in his Meqor Barukh. Rav Dov Katz, a product of Slabodka and author of a six book series on the history of the Mussar Movement and the thought of its key figures, cites this list in his coverage of Rav Yisrael, indicating that this tradition had some currency within the movement as well.

Here is a comparison, a list of Franklin’s Virtues with the middos from Cheshbon haNefesh and Rav Yisrael Salanter that appear similar. The order is Rav Yisrael’s so that you can better see how the list evolved to its final state:

Assuming that on 11 of these the close match was intentional, even though the order differs, you’ll notice that R’ Mendel Satonover dropped two of the virtues: Temperance and Moderation. This was not oversight, as HISTAPQUT (“Before taking food into your mouth, consider what benefit it has for your personal health or the fulfillment of a precept.”) is one of the middos he suggests for customizing the list. R’ Mendel instead added the following middos:

• 2. SAVLONUS. When something bad happens to you and you did not have the power to avoid it, do not aggravate the situation even more through wasted grief.
• 11. NICHUSAH. The words of the wise are stated gently. In being good, do not be called ‘evil’.

In short, two middos that we tend to think of in “religious” terms were replaced by ones that have more interpersonal application. The one difference between Rav Yisrael’s 13 primary middos and those listed in Cheshbon haNefesh takes this another step in the same direction. The middah of perishus, which R’ Mendel Satanover explains with a focus on chastity, is replaced with Kavod, respect for others.

When I was discussing Mussar with a friend once, he noticed my focus on Middos work. He asked if this perception wasn’t a product of our times, where Chassidus, Mussar, or lehavdil New Age and Self-Help work are all seen in very personal, Me-Centered, terms. What about the Mussar of R’ Yisrael, he asked, of dropping everything to help care for people during the cholera epidemic; of missing Kol Nidrei to care for a child left with an older sister who didn’t know what to do for her; of washing his hands with as little water as possible, so that Rav Yisrael’s “hamotzi” wouldn’t be at the expense of the person who had to draw and carry the water; or who said the most important stringency in matzah baking is not to overwork the widows who were employed at the bakery; etc, etc, etc…?

My answer was that yes, Mussar is about building relationships, but the only part of that bridge to others that we can actually work on is the stanchion on our shore. Thus, we work on middos, but Rav Yisrael defined the perfection of those middos in terms of what best aids us to best share Hashem’s Good with others.

And we see that in his list of Middos.

In contrast, while Mesilas Yesharim is a forerunner of the Mussar Movement, R’ Moshe Chaim Luzzatto wasn’t of the same mindset when he wrote it. To him, man’s ultimate goal is the ability to cleave to a particular Other, which was only possible in a particular “place”. And so, in Mesilas Yesharim the measure of middos is how much they will enable me to “enjoy the shine of the Shechinah” in the World to Come.

Are those goals really different? No. As the Ramchal himself puts it in the beginning of Derekh Hashem, G-d created us in order for Good to have someone to bestow that good upon. Cleaving to G-d means being a conduit of His Good to man, and the only way to be that conduit is to stand in His Image.

However, as I note on the “Forks” category a number of times, the difference in focus, in the approach by which we choose to reach for that goal, does create changes in our practice.

See also:

• The Sheleimus (Wholeness) – Deveiqus (Cleaving) Fork — Lithuania vs. Chassidus
• The Ramchal and other tines on the “hashkafic fork in the road”
• The “Forks” category of posts

This entry was posted on 18 Adar 5770 at 8:29pm and is filed under Middos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.