Customer Reviews

Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar

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This book is an excellent presentation of Mussar, by one of today's premier Mussar teachers in the US/Canada. The author is not Orthodox, and doesn't pretend to be. His own Mussar teacher is Orthodox, and approved of this author's teaching of Mussar to the larger community of both Orthodox and other Jews as well as non-Jews. The material is easy to understand and easy to put into practice. The author teaches Mussar as it was meant to be practiced, with kindness as well as consciousness. If you are the least interested in Mussar, and not interested in a practice to beat yourself over the head with, this is the book you've been looking for. I bought copies for friends along with my own.

Mussar is a Jewish ethical practice that involves self-examination leading to self-improvement. The practice is positive in nature and outward focussed though it involves a certain amount of introspection as well.

Everyday Holiness is well laid out in three sections. Part one explains what Mussar is and gives something of its history. Part two describes eighteen middot (character traits) including how they impact on our lives and steps we might take to improve the balance of that particular quality in our personalities. Part three describes Mussar practice, including daily, weekly and annual activities.

I found the book wonderfully clear and relevant for today. It would be quite possible to launch into Mussar with just this book as a guide.

I had never heard of Mussar until recently. I am a Jew and have been practicing Buddhism for the last 25 years. Mussar ties Jewish thought, Talmudic and Biblical in origin, with concepts like generosity, loving-kindness and other principles that are common to Buddhism.
This book is outlined in a way that offers daily readings and you could just keep starting over each time you finish. I read from it after i finish my morning meditation session. This book has provided me with a spiritual part of Judaism that had been difficult to connect with prior to reading it.
I can't say that it has changed my life, but it has added to it something essential and beneficial for me and ultimately for all sentient beings. Thanks to Alan Morinis for writing it.
peace

I bought this book because it's the text for a course the author offers at the Mussar Institute by the same name, which I'm now taking. The point of studying the material is to become a good person. Not necessarily a happier person, or a better-liked person, or a richer person, a better person in the ways that God measures that. I'd watched my husband study Mussar for three years and seen him become less anxious, kinder, a more attentive father who could listen more and judge less. He seldom talked to me about what he was studying or how it was effecting all those changes, but the evidence that Mussar brings dramatic changes was impressive. So I signed up. The process is so gentle and moderate, I didn't expect any results quickly. Yet they have come. I'm about 6 weeks in and my outlook on life has changed dramatically. I normally struggle with depression and cynicism and despair, and that has lifted in ways I find amazing. I am so glad to have started studying Mussar.

This book has the power to change your life. Every night I study the text, and every day I practice the lessons. I am a better person because of this book, and I am a much happier, well-adjusted man as well. If you are interested in becoming a mensch, this is a good place to start. The study of mussar is what I have been looking for my entire Jewish life, and I am so grateful that I found this modern presentation of the mussar ideals.

I first encountered Alan Morinis when he was in town about ten years ago. He seemed then like a good solid person, neither more nor less. He helped us set up a Mussar group here. The group was designed to last for a year, and we went over 13 positive attributes. We focused on each attribute for two weeks, and then focused on the same 13 attributes in the same order for another two weeks each.

Each attribute had a meditation mantra associated with it, and, by meeting together as a group and discussing our experiences, we were enabled to progress, in some small way, in that attribute. The attributes are many, of course, and the selection of only thirteen may seem arbitrary, but one must start somewhere. We began with humility, which was defined as follows: don't hog the bench, but do sit on the bench rather than half off it. Other attributes included gratitude, enthusiasm, lovingkindness, generosity, orderliness, patience, compassion, faith, trust, and awe. Alan Morinis did considerable research into classic Jewish texts, from the Bible through modern times, to provide meaningful readings for the group. The names of some of these books, such as Luzatto's _The Path of the Just_, appear in the notes of _Everyday Holiness_.

Alan Morinis had encountered a crisis in his own life which forced him to step back and examine himself. By good fortune or divine guidance, he came across mussar and learned the name of a mussar master, Rabbi Perr. He contacted this master and began his own journey. Only when he had begun to grow did he produce the program which he offered to us and to others around the United States and Canada. That was the point at which I first encountered him.

He returned here in a couple of years and each of us in our mussar group was privileged to spend half an hour with him. He listened and offered a meaningful response. I came away knowing I had been in the presence of an extraordinary person. He had himself grown phenominally in the time since I had first heard him speak.

He returned in another three years or so and gave a sermon. No private meetings were officially offered, for there were, by now, not enough hours for all who wanted to see him. But even in the public meeting, it was an extraordinary experience to be in the same room with him.

He came again in April 2011 and spoke at the Jewish Community Center. The words were such as, perhaps, almost anyone could speak, but everyone was inspired, less by the words than by the spirit in which they were spoken.

This is what mussar did for Alan Morinis. Each time we encounter him, he has grown. In _Everyday Holiness_, he shares this growth with us: he outlines the path he has taken so that we, too, can grow, a millimeter at a time, so slowly that we almost think we are standing still, until the years go by and we find ourselves untempted by the tendency to laziness or to disorder (my own problems) or to impatience or to anger or to stinginess or to dishonesty or to holding a grudge, or to whatever it was that had always dogged our steps before. We recover, not by working on the negative traits, which would be unproductive, but by working on the opposing positive traits of enthusiasm, orderliness, patience, lovingkindness, generosity, honesty, forgiveness, and so on.

_Everyday Holiness offers guidance in how to follow an ordinary everyday program in personal moral growth. Its first section briefly explains mussar, ending with two examples, one in which presents the effect that mussar practice had on one mother, who reports, "At that...instant...I saw...two doors. One was really familiar...myself yelling, 'You idiot!'...The other door was a new one...myself saying, 'What a mess! Let's clean this up.'"

Mussar had taught her that she had the choice, and she chose the "new one".

The second and major section of the book devotes about twelve pages each to 18 attributes. (It also has a list, in an appendix, of many more attributes.) We are to choose 13 attributes to work on, for two weeks each, and then again for two weeks each. Under humility, for example, he includes this caution: "Humility taken to the extreme...throws a veil across the iner light of the soul" (48). And he cites a Talmudic story of a man in a position of authority who was too humble to take any one of the desperately needed possible steps to prevent a disaster. He "shrank from the task he had been given" (49); he shrank from his responsibility.

Within the 12 pages devoted to "Compassion," he cites a daily prayer which contains the line, "Gd, the Compassionate Father" (76). This reminds us that compassion is a parental quality and a Divine quality.

In the third section, "The Route," occurs a chapter on "The Stages of Mussar Practice". These stages include "Sensitivity," which alerts us to our traits, "Self-Restraint," which enables us to begin in some small way to improve, and "Transformation," the ultimate result of mussar practice--the result so visible to anyone who has encountered Alan Morinis at two and three year intervals.

He cites Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe's suggestion that to cultivate patience, we set aside half an hour a day--preferably the most difficult half hour of the day--and "commit to being patient for [that] half hour....[or] start with fifteen minutes, or even ten....start small and build up" (280).

Also in this section is a recommended system of practice to bring about such change. For example, to cultivate generosity, do not give away a hundred dollars to a good cause. Instead, identify 100 good causes and give one dollar to each one, thereby exercising generosity 100 times. That gives us more bang for our buck, as the saying goes, because the inner system doesn't know how much is being given; it merely experiences the act of giving, and, using this paradigm, it experiences it 100 times(281).

In his penultimate chapter, Morinis suggests some small celebration at the end of a year, and also suggests working with a partner or with a group. In his conclusion, he reminds us that "There is no end to the potential for growth" (287) and he tells us, "You are a soul" (288). He reminds us of "Rabbi Eliahu Lopian's definition of Mussar: 'Making the heart grasp what the mind knows'" (291).

I recommend this book absolutely. Fortunately, it is available in hardback, which can take long and repeated usage. It is extraordinarily useful in making the series of tiny changes which add up to personal transformation.

This book has been powerful in my life. You have to take it slowly and highlight, go back over the information and digest it, which is great. I'll be reading it over and over again. You don't have to be Jewish to use it either, or to apply it!

This is a well written book regarding the Jewish Study of Mussar. It is easy to begin your own practice by following this book.

I heard about this on a radio station while traveling south. I couldn't find a music station that I liked. I tuned into a talk show that talked about Mussar and this book in particular. I was hooked! It all makes perfect sense and the one lesson that stands out to me is that is you keep reacting the same way in the same situation, you will get the same end result (beating the dead horse). We are here to learn something and are destined to repeat ourselves over and over until we figure it out.

Mussar began as a 19th century movement within eastern European Orthodox, non-Chasidic Jewry. The movement seems in part to have been formed as a response to Chasidism, which sought to enliven Jewish practice with ecstatic, personal elements. Mussar did the same, concentrating on ethical behavior and practice, deep introspection, meditation, isolation, community involvement, and strict Torah observance.

Alan Morinis' Everyday Holiness is his follow up volume to Climbing Jacob's Ladder. That book was about Morinis' introduction and embrace of Mussar practice. Everyday Holiness shows that Morinis has now done his homework, read the Mussar texts, done the practices, and presented us with an introductory primer.

Everyday Holiness instructs us to do things we would normally do as good people if life and our own character faults did not so often trip us up: We should be kind, patient, soft spoken, not speak ill of others, not lie, have compassion, humility, patience, gratitude, a sense of order, and so forth. Easy things to read about and say, yet harder to live and practice. Mussar, with its strident attitude about action, will broker no theoretical life. Mussar must be lived.

If you want to try the Mussar program (or a portion of it) there is a section at the end with tips. If you want to read the original texts, The Palm Tree of Devorah, The Path of The Just, The Duties of the Heart, feel free to buckle down and get your exegesis on.

Morinis' book, although a trifle lulling at times and prone to repetition, is a perfect start to the seemingly impossible task of making ourselves better than we are.