Finding the Path

Many have heard me speak of the reality that my journey into the world of studying and practicing Mussar was incidental. Really! Ever since my ordination as a rabbi in 1983, I have tried diligently to maintain a practice of torah lishmah – study for its own sake. This is a Jewish value.  In my earliest years, right from the months after ordination, I would get together monthly with two classmates/colleagues and we would study.  Pretty early on we realized two things:

Our lives and our life experiences are also “texts” from which we can and should learn. Indeed, those early years were filled with sharing and discussing our personal challenges and experiences as newly minted rabbis serving as assistant rabbis in large congregations. (Yes, we studied classic Jewish texts too!) The second lesson? We should not be doing this on our day off. Study is part of the role of a rabbi. With one of us living on Long Island; me in Manhattan; and our third partner in New Jersey, much our of “study day” was spent traveling as we switched off our meeting locations. For me, the die was cast. I would always seek out opportunities to continue learning, and not just by reading and studying by myself.

Our Rabbis teach - אוֹ חַבְרוּתָא אוֹ מִיתוּתָא – Either hevruta or death!” (Ta’anit 23a)

Hevruta is often used to refer to study with a partner. The Talmudic context (and Sefaria) render it even more basically – friendship, or companionship. Indeed, we have all learned some powerful lessons about that over these past few years when for so long, we were unable to see friends, family members, co-workers, and even neighbors in three-dimensions. Even during my years as a rabbi in Jackson, Mississippi, where no colleagues were to be found close by, I sought opportunities to learn.

My current hevruta began in late 2004, after my first experience learning at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem during the summer. Several of us from the Boston area were so excited by our experience at the Institute that we set about to create a regular local hevruta, so we could continue what began over those ten days in Jerusalem. Ten days a year did not seem enough. We were four strong, and we found ourselves a teacher to guide us. As life happens, first one, and then another of the colleagues had to step aside, due to their schedule. The two of us who remained, are still going strong. In another year or so we will hit the two decade mark.

One day, my hevruta partner and I were studying a rabbinic midrash we’d been working on for a couple of years. My partner asked, “Would you mind if we study something different? I love this text, but I am wondering what else we might learn.” I was totally open to that and replied, “I don’t care what we study, I care that we study.” It was largely true. After some discussion we decided to try studying a text by Rabbi Israel Salanter, the founder of the Mussar Movement. Neither of us had much familiarity with Mussar. I’ll not recount the rest of that story, except to note my gratitude for my friend’s question and the opening it created. It’s over a decade now, and suffice it to say, that simple question was life changing.

I continue to treasure our weekly hevruta sessions, which have in recent years, taken place on Zoom, for reasons we all understand. After the Salanter text, we completed two courses of study with The Mussar Institute; spent a year or so studying the weekly Torah portion through a Mussar lens; studied three complete Mussar classics; and now continue to study a variety of Mussar texts week by week. We each completed training in Mussar group facilitation under the auspices of The Mussar Institute. Much of the work I now do revolves around studying, teaching and sharing Mussar. For me, all this arose from that innocent question asked across a table in the Watertown library where we used to meet for our weekly sessions.

The lessons I have learned over the course of this journey, may it continue, are too numerous to count, or recount. There is a lesson that stands out, and this too, I attribute to my dear hevruta partner. Part of what I love about Mussar is that it is no mere intellectual, or even spiritual pursuit. It is both, but it is both and . . .  

Mussar is an authentic Jewish spiritual path which is meant to be lived in our everyday lives, relationships and experiences. Merely reading and studying teachings about various middot/soul-traits is a wonderful pursuit. But if the teachings stay with the book, or even just in the mind, we leave so much behind.  My partner speaks of what he calls “street Mussar.” Ultimately all that one learns and practices in Mussar, is meant to be carried out of the room and put into practice in everyday life. Whether its driving the car in maddening traffic and reaching for savlanut/patience; or sitting in a class or conversation where one or another person is monopolizing the discussion and remembering anavah/humility; whether it is how I treat even someone with whom I vehemently disagree with kavod/honor; or finding balance when I feel ka’as/anger, a natural but potentially destructive human emotion rising within me, calling on my Mussar learning and practice can help me find balance. This is true with every single middah. Part of the challenge is developing the practice so that I am not only carrying it, but using it wherever I am and wherever I am going. I am far from perfect at this, but the discipline and practice have stood me well when I bring it front and center in any given moment.

Indeed, that is part of why I began to work on these musings, because I find such value in it – and feel it is a very much needed discipline in our complicated times. AS this vehicle develops, I hope to continue musing about and sharing how the middot and lessons I find in Mussar can be pragmatic tools in our everyday lives.

So, thank you, Rabbi Jonathan Kraus, my hevruta, my dear friend for setting me on a path with a simple question. I simply can’t adequately find the words to express the fullness of my hakarat hatov – my gratitude!