Yisrael Salanter
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Rabbi Yisrael Lipkin, better known as "Rav Yisrael Salanter", (1810- February 2, 1883) was the father of the Mussar movement in Orthodox Judaism and a famed Rosh yeshiva and Talmudist. The epithet Salanter was added to his name due to the influence on his thinking by Rabbi Yosef Zundel of Salant.
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[edit] Biography
Rabbi Lipkin was born in Zhagory in 1810, the son of Rabbi Zev Wolf, the Rabbi of that town and later Av Beth Din of Goldingen and Telz. As a boy, he studied with Rabbi Tzvi Hirsh Braude of Salant.
After his marriage, Rabbi Lipkin settled at Salant, where he continued his studies under Rabbi Hirsch Broda and Rabbi Yosef Zundel of Salant, himself a disciple of Rabbi Chaim Volozhin. Rabbi Zundel exerted a deep influence on the development of Rabbi Lipkin's character; he had developed a method of self-improvement (mussar), which Rabbi Lipkin adopted.
Not only was Rabbi Lipkin a great teacher of mussar, he was a tremendous Torah scholar. Around 1842, Rabbi Lipkin was appointed rosh yeshiva of the Rabbi Meile yeshiva (Tomchai Torah) in Vilna. While there, he established a new yeshiva in Zarechye, a suburb of Vilna, where he lectured for about three years.
At Rabbi Lipkin's suggestion, the classic religious ethics works of Moshe Chaim Luzzatto and Solomon ibn Gabirol were reprinted at Vilna. Had Rabbi Lipkin not been such a great Torah scholar, it is unlikely that his mussar school of thought would have been accepted in the Orthodox world.
In 1848, the Czarist government decided to create a government-sponsored Rabbinical College to train rabbis. Rabbi Lipkin was identified as a candidate to teach at or run the school. However, he feared that the school would be used to produce "puppets" of the government and refused the position. Fearing backlash, he left Vilna and moved to Kovno, Lithuania, where he established another yeshiva.
He retained charge until 1857, when he left Lithuania and moved to Prussia for health reasons. He remained in the house of philanthropists, the Hirsch brothers of Halberstadt, until his health improved, and then in 1861 began the publication of the Hebrew monthly "Tebunah", devoted to rabbinical law and religious ethics. However, this was discontinued at the end of a year due to Rabbi Lipkin's failing health.
Rabbi Lipkin lived for periods in Memel, Konigsberg and Berlin. In 1877, he founded the famed Kovno kollel. Toward the end of his life Rabbi Lipkin was called to Paris to organize a community among the many Russian Jewish immigrants, and he remained there for two years.
Rabbi Lipkin is also known as one of the first people to try to translate the Talmud into another language. However, he died before he could finish this immense project, Rabbi Lipkin died on Friday 2nd February (25th Shevat) 1883 in Konigsberg, then part of Germany. For many years, the exact location of his grave was unknown. Following a lengthy investigation, in 2001 the grave was located in Konigsberg.
[edit] Personality and character
Rabbi Lipkin was unique and his views were not always in the mainstream. When the Ukase, making military service obligatory, appeared, he wrote an appeal to the rabbis and community leaders urging them to keep lists of recruits, so as to leave no pretext for the contention that the Jews shirked such service. He was considered one of the most eminent Orthodox rabbis of the nineteenth century because of his broad Talmudic scholarship, his deep piety, and his personal influence for good. He was probably the only rabbi of his time that exerted a wide influence on his fellow rabbis and on the Jewish communities of Russia.
Rabbi Lipkin had a son who became a noted mathematics professor at the University of St. Petersburg in the nineteenth century and no longer followed an Orthodox way of life. In response to this appointment, some of the leading maskilim placed a congratulatory advertisement in one of the Hebrew newspapers of the time. It blessed Rabbi Yisrael for the nachat (derived satisfaction) that his son’s appointment to the college faculty must have brought to him.
Rabbi Lipkin then placed his own counter-advertisement in the next issue of that paper and stated that he had no nachat whatsoever from his son because of the latter’s forsaking Jewish life and practice. And he further stated that he would be grateful in this world and in the next world to anyone who could induce his son to return to a life of Jewish tradition and observance.[1]
[edit] Students
Among Rabbi Lipkin's most famous students were:
- Rabbi Naftali Amsterdam (נפתלי אמסטרדאם)
- Rabbi Yitzchok Blazer
- Rabbi Eliezer Gordon
- Rabbi Jacob Joseph
- Rabbi Yerucham Perlman
- Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv
[edit] Published works
Many of his articles from the journal "Tevunah" were collected and published in Imrei Binah (1878). His Iggeres HaMussar ("Ethical Letter") was first published in 1858 and then repeatedly thereafter. Many of his letters were published in Ohr Yisrael ("The Light of Israel") in 1890 (Edited by Rabbi Yitzchak Blazer). His disciples collected many of his discourses and published them in Even Yisrael (1853) and Eitz Peri (1880).
[edit] References
- ^ Rabbi Berel Wein on his website
- This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, a publication now in the public domain.
[edit] Bibliography
- Finkelman S. The story of Reb Yisrael Salanter; the legendary founder of the mussar movement. New York, NY: Mesorah Publications, . ISBN 0-89906-798-0.
