The Yeshiva Blog
What is Mussar?
Learning Torah is not just about abstract thinking; it should also have a practical application, and affect our daily lives.
When you study Mussar you are studying how to live a meaningful and ethical life, applying the Torah you learn to your life. Different yeshivas place different emphasis on the study of mussar. Some devote a few minutes of daily chavrusa or a weekly shmooze from the Mashgiach.
In reading and explaining a posuk or a statement of Chazal, one is not allowed to simply say whatever one wants to say, whenever one wants to say it. Rather we must ask ourselves whether we are pumping our philosophy into Chazal, or extracting our philosophy from Chazal. To that end, in Yeshivas Bircas HaTorah we learn Chumash and Mussar like we learn Gemara.
In his Mussar Shiurim, the Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Tagger applies his unique, incisive and methodological approach to learning the pasukim of the parashah, the meforshim, and the Baalei Mussar, asking simple and straightforward questions to unveil a solid understanding of the Torah, from which he derives clear and powerful concepts to affect the life of every Jew. At Bircas, everything has a drive home. Mussar and personal growth are at the heart of all that we do - the daily mussar shiurim (often twice daily), and regular mussar vaadim are ample testimony to this. It is even apparent even from the divrei Torah shared by the talmidim on in-Shabboses. Everything has a drive home.
Here, sharing his perspective, is the Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Nissim Tagger...
Rabbi Nissim Tagger, Rosh Yeshiva - How We Learn Mussar in Yeshiva?
The classical approach to mussar is the Mashiach, rabbi or Rosh Yeshiva gives a drasha with mussar concepts, takes a piece and builds it up and the talmidim try to integrate that piece of mussar.
However, in the yeshiva we try to do it differently. We try to hit the primary texts - Chazal, Rashi on Chumash, or the Ramban on Chumash, and we try to learn the piece properly as if we were learning a regular piece of Gemara, in an interactive shiur way, as opposed to the rabbi giving a schmooze. We try to fuse the two of them together. Mussar, in a shiur format - where you're learning a piece of aggadata, and trying to analyze it and the talmidim are all learning it together with the person giving the mussar. And then from the back and forth and the kashias and teirutzim, a principle is generated from the piece of Gemara itself. And then that piece of mussar is a principle that we try to integrate into our personal lives. But that's only after we've worked hard to generate the piece of Torah.
This is similar to what Rav Yisrael Salanter revolutionized in his approach to mussar - which was actually learning a shiur, coming up with a piece, a principle, a core principle of mussar - and then driving it home and planting it inside our hearts.
So first you start with the mind. Stimulate the mind and then BOOM! hit the heart with the piece of mussar. That is the way the yeshiva does it. It's not so easy, and there's a lot of back and forth, very few speeches and schmoozes, and much more interactive dynamic presentations that bring the students to understand something, and then try to apply it to their personal lives.
Click here for a selection of Mussar Shiurim from the Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Nissim Tagger
Click here for a selection of Mussar Shiurim from the Mashgiach Rabbi Gavirel Leventhal