Corinne E. Blackmer. Transforming Ethical Behavior: The Musar Movement and the Care of the Self

Transforming Ethical Behavior: The Musar Movement and the Care of the Self

By Corinne E. Blackmer

(Southern Connecticut State University )

Source: Judaica Ukrainica 3 (2014): 24-36

Publication date: December 1, 2014

Publication type: article

Language: English

Full text:

Abstract

The Musar – or ethical – Movement came to maturity in an era of crisis in the 19 century for Eastern European Jewry, brought on by political oppression, social persecution, and the lasting effects of the Haskalah. The latter caused many Jews, particularly more prosperous ones who could relocate to Germany or other parts of Western Europe, to become disaffiliated from and disavow Judaism, which was not only an obstacle to integration within the Christian world because of anti-Semitism, but also perceived by some – if certainly not all – Maskilim as barbarous and fossilized. Although earlier figures such as the Gaon of Vilna, among others, influenced Israel Salanter, the main founder of the Musar Movement, in his conception of this movement, he eventually came to see ethical training as the cure for the misfortunes of Eastern European Jewry. However naïve the latter conviction, or unknowing about the impacts of class divisiveness, impoverishment, and political oppression, Salanter did ask himself a central and pertinent question: Why was there so much unethical behavior in the world despite the existence of so many books on how to behave ethically? Salanter concluded that book learning alone did not suffice to inculcate good ethical behavior, which, predating the findings of Sigmund Freud, he argued necessitated a transformation on the sub-and-unconscious levels of human motivation and action. He developed a series of individualized and group exercises based around the concept of yirat Elohim or fear of God that were remarkably successful, and that reflect the ancient practices of ethical self-improvement that Michel Foucault investigates in his book, The Care of the Self. What both Salanter’s and Foucault’s work share is an emphasis on the social, but also individual, modes of teaching, as well as their extension into lifelong habits of learning that actually change human ethical behavior. Far from exhibiting a declining Jewish community, Salanter’s conception of musar practice envisions a vibrant social space replete with modes of exercise, schools, lectures, professionals at spiritual direction, friendships and mutual obligations associated with ethical self-transformation.

Keywords: Jewish Thought, the Musar Movement, the Care of the Self, Eastern European Jewry

References

Eckman, Samuel Lester. The History of the Mussar Movement: 1840–1945. New York: Shengold Publishers, 1975.

---. Revered by All: The Life and Works of Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan – Hafetz Hayyim. New York: Shengold Publishers, 1974.

Foucault, Michel. The Care of the Self, vol. 3 of The History of Sexuality. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1986.

Goodfriend, Elaine Adler. “Ethical Theory and Practice in the Hebrew Bible.” In The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Ethics and Morality, edited by Elliot N. Dorff and Jonathan K. Crane, 35–50. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Hundert, Gershon David. Jews in Lithuania-Poland in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

Katz, Dov R. The Musar Movement: Its History, Leading Personalities, and Doctrines. Trans. Leonard Oschry. Tel Aviv: Orly Press, 1975.

Krumbein, Elyakin. Musar for Moderns. Jersey, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 2005.

Morinise, Alan E. Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar. Boston: Trumpeter, 2007.

New Jewish Publication Society Hebrew-English TANAKH. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1999.

Soloveitchik, Joseph Dov. The Halakhic Mind: An Essay on Jewish Tradition and Modern Thought. New York: Free Press, 1986.

Stampfer, Shaul. Lithuanian Yeshivas of the Nineteenth Century: Creating a Tradition of Learning. Trans. Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz. Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012.

Stern, Eliyahu. The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.

Stone, Ira F. “Musar Ethics and Other Nineteenth-Century Jewish Ethical Theories.” In The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Ethics and Morality, edited by Elliot N. Dorff and Jonathan K. Crane, 118–133. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

DOI 10.14653/ju.2014.02