Browsed by
Category: Mussar & Ethics

Nancy Sinkoff — Benjamin Franklin and the Virtues of Mussar

Nancy Sinkoff — Benjamin Franklin and the Virtues of Mussar

Comments 0 Comment

has written a letter to The Forward, available below to readers of the Seforim blog. (It has not yet appeared in The Forward.) Related to the letter below, is Prof. Nancy Sinkoff, “Benjamin Franklin in Jewish Eastern Europe: Cultural Appropriation in the Age of the Enlightenment,” Journal of the History of Ideas 61:1 (January, 2000): 133-152, available in PDF courtesy of her Rutgers University faculty page, see here (PDF). This is Prof. Sinkoff’s first contribution to the Seforim blog. We…

Read More Read More

Ofeq Institute and the New (English) Version of the Messilat Yesharim

Ofeq Institute and the New (English) Version of the Messilat Yesharim

Comments 0 Comment

The Messilat Yesharim, by R. Moshe Chaim Luzzato (Ramchal), is one of the foundational works of mussar. The Gra, among others, praise the Messilat Yesharim. As such, any addition to its oeuvre is important in its own right. The Ofeq Institute* has recently published an English translation of an alternative version of the Messilat Yesharim. This version is fundamentally different than the standard edition of Messilat Yesharim. The standard edition is divided into chapters based upon various character traits. The…

Read More Read More

Mad magazine and Peanuts – moralists for today?

Mad magazine and Peanuts – moralists for today?

Comments 16 comments

* With all the messianic overtones that the Jewish people are regaled with over Tishrei, one beloved by Chassidim is the Zohar’s view (I, 117a) is that we are privileged to live in an era where similar results occur in both the natural and religious worlds, where “the gates of knowledge above, and the fountains of knowledge below, will be opened”. Academics and scientists are always aware that similar breakthroughs in knowledge occur at approximately the same time in different…

Read More Read More

Iggeres Ha’Mussar: The Ethical Will of a Bibliophile

Iggeres Ha’Mussar: The Ethical Will of a Bibliophile

Comments 0 Comment

A few days ago, the sefer Iggeres Ha’mussar from R. Yehudah Ibn Tibbon, was reprinted. What follows is a short review of this beautiful work. R. Yehudah Ibn Tibbon was born in 1120. Not much is known about him but from this work one learns a few more things about him, he was a doctor, close to the Ba’al Ha’meor (pp. 50, 63). R. Yehudah appears to have been working on another work (see p. 46) although it is unclear…

Read More Read More