`That’s a great deal to make one word mean,’ Alice said in a thoughtful tone.
`When I make a word do a lot of work like that,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `I always pay it extra.’
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6
I have noticed over the years that the term Mussar is getting used more and [...]
What is the difference between Mussar and other forms of personal growth?
I’ve been asked any number of times how Mussar differs from Covey, Pransky, Positive Psychology and a host of other self-improvement programs and concepts. You may find yourself asking the same question and I’d like to save you the call.
Mussar, the Torah’s approach to [...]
Permit me to share with you my paraphrase of a Chanukah thought expressed best by the legendary Mirer Rosh Yeshiva (Dean of the Mir Torah Academy, transplanted from Lithuania to Jerusalem and NY) Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz (1902-1978) in his collection of discourses entitled Sichos Mussar.
The Jewish People were physical endangered during the Second Temple period, but [...]
My apologies to those who are not familiar with baseball; hopefully the message will be clear even to those who do not share that childhood experience with me.
Legend has it (I’ve not seen it confirmed anywhere) that baseball great Ty Cobb once commented that Babe Ruth (the home run king of his time) didn’t play [...]
Human beings have always attempted to push against the limits imposed on them by their nature, but we seem to have few tools for doing so when the nature we are dealing with is internal. We try to build buildings which push the limits of physics; we create and play games which tax the [...]
ed note: The following requires an understanding of the basics of Mussar; the ideal, the real and the process. If you have not done so yet, please be sure to study the introduction to Mussar carefully.
There is an ideal called Bitachon which, loosely translated, means assurance drawn from HaShem, and is associated with [...]