[Avodah] Mussar the Label

[Jonathan Baker]

RnTK:

> When I was a high school student in Bais Yakov, we used to have what were  
> called "mussar" classes.  These consisted of a rebetzen yelling at us...
> ...ashamed of yourselves."  It took me two decades to overcome the  emotional 
> association of the word "mussar" with "boring and  sanctimonious."
  
> That's why it amazes me that there could be something like a Mussar  
> Institute or a mussar Shabbaton.  The appeal of an aish seminar or a Chabad  Shabbaton 
> I totally get, the appeal of a mussar Shabbaton, I don't get --  about as 
> appealing as a diet and exercise spa.

Ah, the appeal of neo-Chasidism, for Americans who are jaded with the 
excitement of Western life, yet uninspired by the kalte Litvaks.

I've argued before that AishDas, whatever its methodology, needs to get
away from the "mussar" self-description.  It's like a lead weight restraining
any attempt to get off the ground.  

For the non-Orthodox, such as those who flock to Alan Morinis' Traveling
Mussar Show, maybe it can be painted as some kind of "inner spiritual
life of the 19th-century masters", but for those who have experienced the
dumbness of most postwar American Mussar, it's a huge turnoff.  My friend's
son, who is brilliant (not only knows Shev Shmatsa, but also its interpre-
tation in terms of pre-Bayesian attempts to quantify probability, as well as
its sources in the Rashba and other rishonim), wants to get away from the
yeshiva (one of the big ones) for college, largely because of the mussar
aspect (restrictions on life outside of school, much yelling and heavy-handed 
enforcement for perceived faults/violations). 

So I'd say that mussar probably hasn't changed much in the popular Orthodox
imagination since you were in high school.

AishDas follows a methodology loosely based on the late R' Shlomo Wolbe's
ideas about mussar, which are quite different from the old 19th-century
heavy-handed model.  Just as the methods are different (no yelling at 
oneself for 20 minutes a day, or publicly humiliating oneself to break
one's spirit), so too the label should be different.  The Daat-Rachamim-
Tiferet slogan, while not terribly euphonious, does seem to indicate a 
different idea, one of Maimonidean moderation (daat mediates between chochma
and bina, rachamim mediates between chesed and din, tiferet mediates between
the seven lower sefirot and thus the emotions, in the Chasidic psychological
model), rather than extreme self-abasement.

And neither case (self-abasement or self-improvement) really has anything
to do with self-righteous self-appointed religious figures yelling at you 
for being bad wrong and stupid.

All of which is why we need to get away from the mussar label, to something
more inspiring than deadening.

--
        name: jon baker              web: http://www.panix.com/~jjbaker
     address: jjbaker at panix.com     blog: http://thanbook.blogspot.com