Musar literature

[3] Explicitly Kabbalistic mystical works of Musar literature include Tomer Devorah (The Palm Tree of Deborah) by Moses ben Jacob Cordovero, Reshit Chochmah by Eliyahu de Vidas, and Kav ha-Yashar by Tzvi Hirsch Kaidanover.

The Vilna Gaon commented that he could not find a superfluous word in the first seven chapters of the work and stated that he would have traveled to meet the author and learn from his ways if he'd still been alive.

According to Julia Phillips Cohen, summarizing the work of Matthias B. Lehmann on Musar literature in Ottoman Sephardic society: Beginning in the eighteenth century, a number of Ottoman rabbis had undertaken the task of fighting the ignorance they believed was plaguing their communities by producing works of Jewish ethics (musar) in Judeo-Spanish (also known as Ladino).

This development was inspired in part by a particular strain within Jewish mysticism (Lurianic Kabbalah) which suggested that every Jew would necessarily play a role in the mending of the world required for redemption.

It was with this in mind that these Ottoman rabbis--all capable of publishing in the more highly esteemed Hebrew language of their religious tradition--chose to write in their vernacular instead.

While they democratized rabbinic knowledge by translating it for the masses, these "vernacular rabbis" (to use Matthias Lehmann's term) also attempted to instill in their audiences the sense that their texts required the mediation of individuals with religious training.

Menachem Mendel Lefin of Satanov wrote a text titled Cheshbon Ha-Nefesh (Moral Accounting) in 1809, based in part on the ethical program described in the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

These include Tzavaat HaRivash ("Testament of Rabbi Yisroel Baal Shem") and Tzetl Koton by Elimelech of Lizhensk, a seventeen-point program on how to be a good Jew.

Significant Musar writings were made by leaders of the movement, such as Rabbis Israel Salanter, Simcha Zissel Ziv, Yosef Yozel Horwitz, and Eliyahu Dessler.

[1] The movement established musar learning as a regular part of the curriculum in the Lithuanian Yeshiva world, acting as a bulwark against contemporary forces of secularism.