tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309929059139673041.post2142745590427239614..comments2024-03-29T09:34:59.827+03:00Comments on Daas Torah - Issues of Jewish Identity: Rav Yisroel Salanter: Relationship of Musar Movement & Haskala - Rabbi Hillel GoldbergDaas Torahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07252904288544083215noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309929059139673041.post-64326369049374344702013-06-16T03:16:55.142+03:002013-06-16T03:16:55.142+03:00Etkes's biography lists the little that is kno...Etkes's biography lists the little that is known about his life in Western Europe. Golderberg summarizes<br /><br />Residence in Western Europe accelerated and radicalized Rabbi Is¬rael's penchant for pedagogic innovation, but here, too, the tension in the second oscillation – between tradition and innovation - was reduced. The Orthodox who could find Rabbi Israel's inovations objectionable were culturally, if not gcographically, distant, in Lithuania, while the Orthodox of Germany were themselves the originators of new departures. More important, little to nothing came of Rabbi Israel’s innovations, which amounted mostly to suggestions and projects that he could not bring to fruition, The one success, the first jourual of talmudic investigations and Mussar thought, lasted less than two years (Tevunah 1861 – 1862). The stillborn suggestions included the preparation of an Aramaic-Hebrew dictionary to facilitate the study of the Talmud by beginners; the translation of the Talmud from Aramaic to make Talmud accessible to non-initiates; the elucidation of methodological principles of Talmud study, to make it understandable to a systematic mind; the introduction of Talmud into university curricula to increase respect for it among Gentiles (this, as a way of establishing a locus of respect for Talmud that would speak to the assimilating mentality of West European Jewish students, who did not respect Talmud in its own right); and finally, the publication in Russian of Jewish books for assimilating East European Jewish students.[...]<br />Finallv, we may imagine that also the first oscillation, between Musar and talmudic studies received a certain quieting over the years, for Rabbi Israel's writings develop with progressive clarity the interrelation of the two-the subsuming of Musur under the rubric of talmudic teaching, the understanding of talmudic norm as the substance of the Musur person¬ality" And yet, if tension in Rabbi Israel's oscillations did recede, tension surely persisted. First and foremost. on the scale that mattered to Rabbi Israel, he failed. Many of his projects in Western Europe failed. His Musar movement in Eastern Europe never took hold of the community as did its analogue, Hasidism, in other parts of Eastern Europe. In 1881, two years before he died, Rabbi Israel wrote mournfully about the spiritual decomposition of the community he had set out to fortify in 1838. Then there was his illness, never posthumously diagnosed. Symptomatically he suffered from migraine headaches and fits of melancholia. Some link these symptoms to Musar excesses of self-criticism, but they apparently were a hereditary disorder, as his brother and one of his sons (neither of whom was identified with the Musar movement) suffered from similar symp¬tomes. In any case, he was often ill and sometimes virtually disabled, especially in his last years. And finally, he grieved over another one of his sons, Lippman Lipkin, who apparently inherited his father's intellec¬tual ability but turned it, against the wishes of his father, to mathematics (the Lippman parallelogram) instead of to Talmud, dying at the age of thirty. Rabbi Israel's wife also predeceased him, leaving him a widower for thirteen years. And here we reach the ultimate oscillation in Rabbbi Israel Salanter. the struggle between struggle and tranquility. Struggle: his oscillations, travels, projects, tragedies. And tranquility: memoirs paint a picture of a man of self-transcendcnce and serenity, calming and soothing by his presence Contradictory poles coalesce as dynamic equilibrium Daas Torahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07252904288544083215noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309929059139673041.post-40962778565650878242013-06-16T02:15:52.623+03:002013-06-16T02:15:52.623+03:00Do we know anything about R'Israel's life ...Do we know anything about R'Israel's life in Western Europe? Did he teach in secular establishments/institutions? Or did he run a yeshiva of some sort? Did he write anything? Nossonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01317393933488438180noreply@blogger.com