Musar literature
Encyclopedia
Musar literature is the term used for didactic Jewish ethical literature which describes virtues and vices and the path towards perfection in a methodical way.

Definition of Musar literature

Musar literature is often described as "ethical literature." Professors Isaiah Tishby and Joseph Dan
Joseph Dan
Joseph Dan is an Israeli scholar of Jewish mysticism. He taught for over 40 years in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem...

 have described it more precisely as "prose literature that presents to a wide public views, ideas, and ways of life in order to shape the everyday behavior, thought, and beliefs of this public." Musar literature traditionally depicts the nature of moral and spiritual perfection in a methodical way. It is "divided according to the component parts of the ideal righteous way of life; the material is treated methodically – analyzing, explaining, and demonstrating how to achieve each moral virtue (usually treated in a separate chapter or section) in the author's ethical system."

Musar literature can be distinguished from other forms of Jewish ethical
Jewish ethics
Jewish ethics stands at the intersection of Judaism and the Western philosophical tradition of ethics. Like other types of religious ethics, the diverse literature of Jewish ethics primarily aims to answer a broad range of moral questions and, hence, may be classified as a normative ethics...

 literature such as aggadic narrative and halakhic literature.

Medieval Musar literature

Medieval works of Musar literature was composed by a range of rabbis and others, including rationalist philosophers and adherents of Kabbalistic mysticism. Joseph Dan
Joseph Dan
Joseph Dan is an Israeli scholar of Jewish mysticism. He taught for over 40 years in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem...

 has argued that medieval Musar literature reflects four different approaches: the philosophical approach; the standard rabbinic approaches; the approach of Chassidei Ashkenaz
Chassidei Ashkenaz
The Chassidei Ashkenaz was a Jewish movement in the 12th century and 13th century founded by Rabbi Judah the Pious of Regensburg, Germany and several other German Jews members of the Lehr family and the Kalonymus family.Rabbi Judah was born in Speyer, Germany in 1150 during a time of persecution...

; and the Kabbalistic approach.

Philosophical Musar literature

Philosophical works of Musar include Chovot ha-Levavot
Chovot ha-Levavot
Chovot HaLevavot or Ḥovot HaLebabot, , is the primary work of the Jewish philosopher Bahya ibn Paquda, full name Bahya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda...

by Bahya ibn Paquda
Bahya ibn Paquda
Bahya ben Joseph ibn Paquda was a Jewish philosopher and rabbi who lived at Zaragoza, Spain, in the first half of the eleventh century...

 and Hilchot Deot and The Eight Chapters by Maimonides
Maimonides
Moses ben-Maimon, called Maimonides and also known as Mūsā ibn Maymūn in Arabic, or Rambam , was a preeminent medieval Jewish philosopher and one of the greatest Torah scholars and physicians of the Middle Ages...

.

Standard Rabbinic Musar literature

Rabbinic Musar literature came as a reaction to philosophical literature, and tried to show that the Torah and standard rabbinic literature taught about the nature of virtue and vice without recourse to Aristotelian or other philosophical concepts. Classic works of this sort include
  • Ma'alot ha-Middot by Rabbi Yehiel ben Yekutiel Anav of Rome
  • Shaarei Teshuvah (The Gates of Repentance) by Rabbi Yonah Gerondi
    Yonah Gerondi
    Yonah ben Abraham Gerondi , also known as Rabbenu Yonah and Yonah of Gerona, was a Catalan rabbi and moralist, cousin of Nahmanides. He is most famous for his ethical work The Gates of Repentance .- Biography :...

  • Menorat ha-Ma'or by Israel Al-Nakawa b. Joseph of Toledo
  • Menorat ha-Ma'or by Isaac Aboab
  • Orchot Tzaddikim
    Orchot Tzaddikim
    Orchot Tzaddikim is a book on Jewish ethics written in Germany in the 15th century, entitled Sefer ha-Middot by the author, but called Orḥot Ẓaddiḳim by a later copyist...

    (The Ways of the Righteous), by an anonymous author
  • Meneket Rivkah by Rebecca bat Meir Tiktiner
    Rebecca bat Meir Tiktiner
    Rebecca bat Meir Tiktiner was a Yiddish writer, whose works include a treatise on Jewish ethics in the style of musar literature as well as a poem about Simchat Torah. She lived in the 16th century and was buried in Prague; she died circa 1550. She or her father probably resided in the northeast...



Similar works were produced by rabbis who were Kabbalists but whose Musar writings did not bear a kabbalistic character: Nahmanides
Nahmanides
Nahmanides, also known as Rabbi Moses ben Naḥman Girondi, Bonastruc ça Porta and by his acronym Ramban, , was a leading medieval Jewish scholar, Catalan rabbi, philosopher, physician, kabbalist, and biblical commentator.-Name:"Nahmanides" is a Greek-influenced formation meaning "son of Naḥman"...

' Sha'ar ha-Gemul, which focuses on various categories of just and wicked people and their punishments in the world to come; and Rabbi Bahya ben Asher
Bahya ben Asher
Bahye ben Asher ibn Halawa also known as Rabbeinu Behaye was a rabbi and scholar of Judaism. He was a commentator on the Hebrew Bible and is noted for introducing Kabbalah into study of the Torah.He is considered by Jewish scholars to be one of the most distinguished of the Biblical exegetes of...

's Kad ha-Kemah.

Medieval Kabbalistic Musar literature

Explicitly Kabbalistic works of Musar literature include Tomer Devorah
Tomer Devorah
Tomer Devorah was written in Hebrew in the middle of the 16th century by Moses Cordovero, a Jewish kabbalist in Safed, Israel. This short text deals mostly with the Imitation of God through the acquisition of divine traits, especially those of the sephirot. The first edition was published in...

(The Palm Tree of Deborah) by Moses ben Jacob Cordovero
Moses ben Jacob Cordovero
Moses ben Jacob Cordovero, , was a central figure in the historical development of Kabbalah, leader of a mystical school in 16th-century Safed, Israel. He is known by the acronym the Ramak....

, Reshit Chochmah
Reshit Chochmah
Reshit Chochmah is an important book of Kabbalah , ethics and morality , written by the 16th century scholar Rabbi Eliyahu de Vidas. It is based largely on the Zohar...

by Eliyahu de Vidas, and Kav ha-Yashar
Kav ha-Yashar
Kav ha-Yashar authored by Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Kaidanover, is one of the most popular works of musar literature of the last three hundred years. First published in 1705, it has appeared in over 80 editions, in nearly every country around the world...

by Zevi Hirsch Koidonover.

Medieval Ashkenazi-Hasidic Musar literature

Chassidei Ashkenaz
Chassidei Ashkenaz
The Chassidei Ashkenaz was a Jewish movement in the 12th century and 13th century founded by Rabbi Judah the Pious of Regensburg, Germany and several other German Jews members of the Lehr family and the Kalonymus family.Rabbi Judah was born in Speyer, Germany in 1150 during a time of persecution...

 (literally "the Pious of Germany") was a Jewish movement in the 12th century and 13th century founded by Rabbi Judah the Pious (Rabbi Yehuda HeChassid) of Regensburg
Regensburg
Regensburg is a city in Bavaria, Germany, located at the confluence of the Danube and Regen rivers, at the northernmost bend in the Danube. To the east lies the Bavarian Forest. Regensburg is the capital of the Bavarian administrative region Upper Palatinate...

, Germany, which was concerned with promoting Jewish piety and morality. The most famous work of Musar literature produced by this school was The Book of the Pious (Sefer Chassidim).

Modern Musar literature

Literature in the genre of Musar literature continued to be written by modern Jews from a variety of backgrounds.

Mesillat Yesharim

Mesillat Yesharim
Mesillat Yesharim
The Mesillat Yesharim is an ethical text composed by the influential Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto . It is quite different from Luzzato's other writings, which are more philosophical....

 is a Musar text published in Amsterdam by Moshe Chaim Luzzatto
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto , also known by the Hebrew acronym RaMCHaL , was a prominent Italian Jewish rabbi, kabbalist, and philosopher.-Padua:Born in Padua at night, he received classical Jewish and Italian educations, showing a...

 in the 18th century. Mesillat Yesharim is perhaps the most important work of Musar literature of the post-medieval period. The Vilna Gaon
Vilna Gaon
Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman Kramer, known as the Vilna Gaon or Elijah of Vilna and simply by his Hebrew acronym Gra or Elijah Ben Solomon, , was a Talmudist, halachist, kabbalist, and the foremost leader of non-hasidic Jewry of the past few centuries...

 commented that he couldn't find a superfluous word in the first seven chapters of the work, and stated that he would have traveled to meet the author and learn from his ways if he'd still been alive.

Ottoman Musar literature

According to Julia Phillips Cohen, summarizing the work of Matthias B. Lehmann on Musar literature in Ottoman
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

 Sephardic society:

Beginning in the eighteenth century, a number of Ottoman rabbis had undertaken the task of fighting the ignorance they believed was plaguing their communities by producing works of Jewish ethics (musar) in Judeo-Spanish (also known as Ladino). This development was inspired in part by a particular strain within Jewish mysticism (Lurianic Kabbalah
Kabbalah
Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...

) which suggested that every Jew would necessarily play a role in the mending of the world required for redemption. The spread of ignorance among their coreligionists thus threatened to undo the proper order of things. It was with this in mind that these Ottoman rabbis--all capable of publishing in the more highly esteemed Hebrew language of their religious tradition--chose to write in their vernacular instead. While they democratized rabbinic knowledge by translating it for the masses, these "vernacular rabbis" (to use Matthias Lehmann's term) also attempted to instill in their audiences the sense that their texts required the mediation of individuals with religious training. Thus, they explained that common people should gather together to read their books in meldados, or study sessions, always with the guidance of someone trained in the study of Jewish law.


Among the most popular works of Musar literature produced in Ottoman society was Elijah ha-Kohen's Shevet Musar, first published in Ladino
Ladino
Ladino may refer to:*Ladino is the name used primarily in Israel for Judaeo-Spanish, a Sephardic language, primarily spoken among Sephardic Jews, or for the written form used in religious texts and translations; compare to Ashkenazic Jews' language, Yiddish*Ladino is also used for the variety of...

 in 1748. Pele Yoetz by Rabbi Eliezer Papo
Eliezer Papo
Rabbi Eliezer Papo was the rabbi of the community of Selestria in Bulgaria. He is famous for writing the Pele Yoetz, a work of musar literature which gives advice on how to behave as a Jew in many aspects of life....

 (1785-1826) was another exemplary work of this genre.

Haskalah Musar literature

In Europe, significant contributions to Musar literature were made by leaders of the Haskalah
Haskalah
Haskalah , the Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement among European Jews in the 18th–19th centuries that advocated adopting enlightenment values, pressing for better integration into European society, and increasing education in secular studies, Hebrew language, and Jewish history...

. Naphtali Hirz Wessely
Naphtali Hirz Wessely
NaphtaliHerz Wessely, aka NaphtaliHirz Wessely, also Wesel was a 18th-century German Jewish Hebraist and educationist born at Hamburg.-Family History:...

 wrote a Musar text titled Sefer Ha-Middot (Book of Virtues) in approximately 1786. Menachem Mendel Lefin
Menachem Mendel Lefin
Menachem Mendel Lefin was an early leader of the Haskalah movement. He was born in Satanov, Podolia, where he had a traditional Jewish education supplemented by studies in science, mathematics,and medieval philosophy. In the early 1780s he lived in Berlin, where he met Moses Mendelssohn and...

 of Satanov wrote a text titled Cheshbon Ha-Nefesh (Moral Accounting) in 1809, based in part on the ethical program described in the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

Hasidic and Mitnagdic Musar literature

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov
Nachman of Breslov
Nachman of Breslov , also known as Reb Nachman of Bratslav, Reb Nachman Breslover , Nachman from Uman , was the founder of the Breslov Hasidic movement....

's Sefer ha-Middot is a Hasidic classic of Musar literature.

The "Musar letter" of the Vilna Gaon
Vilna Gaon
Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman Kramer, known as the Vilna Gaon or Elijah of Vilna and simply by his Hebrew acronym Gra or Elijah Ben Solomon, , was a Talmudist, halachist, kabbalist, and the foremost leader of non-hasidic Jewry of the past few centuries...

, an ethical will by an opponent of the Hasidic movement, is regarded by some as a classic of Musar literature.

Literature by the Musar movement

The so-called Musar movement encouraged the study of medieval Musar literature to an unprecedented degree, while also producing its own Musar literature. Significant Musar writings were produced by leaders of the Musar movement such as Israel Salanter, Simcha Zissel Ziv
Simcha Zissel Ziv
Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv Broida , also known as the Alter of Kelm , was one of the foremost students of Rabbi Yisrael Salanter and one of the early leaders of the Musar movement...

, Yosef Yozel Horwitz, and Eliyahu Dessler.
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