91快活林

From Judging To Learning

Aug 31, 2015 By Rachel Bovitz | Short Video | Yom Kippur

A Little Black Mark

May 15, 2015 By Rachel Bovitz | Commentary | Behar | Behukkotai

In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin describes a personal practice that involved daily focus on 13 moral virtues. Franklin鈥檚 memoir, translated into several languages in the late 18th century, became widely influential, reaching even Eastern Europe, where Rabbi Menahem Mendel Lefin of Satanov wrote Heshbon Hanefesh, published in 1808. Rabbi Lefin included justice and most of the other virtues in Franklin鈥檚 list when he created his 13 primary middot (moral virtues) to be focused upon in mussar practice (the Jewish approach to cultivating these virtues). Rabbi Lefin鈥檚 definition of tzedek (justice) paraphrases a classic Talmudic teaching attributed to Hillel: 鈥淲hat is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.鈥�