Mussar Masters on Teshuva
Join Rabbi David Sedley and explore the lives, teachings, and unique approaches of the great figures who shaped the Mussar movement, with a special focus on their insights into repentance and personal transformation. Through the writings of these influential masters, uncover timeless guidance for self-reflection, spiritual growth, and meaningful change.
Timezone
Time of Class
September 1, 2026 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Mussar Masters on Teshuva: Rav Yisrael Salanter – Founder of the Mussar Movement
Mussar Masters on Teshuva: Rav Yisrael Salanter – Founder of the Mussar Movement
Class description
This class traces the roots of the Mussar movement through two of its foundational figures: Rabbi Yosef Zundel Salant, the hidden tzadik whose radical humility and refusal of honor made him the movement’s unlikely spiritual grandfather, and his student Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, who transformed that quiet personal piety into a public movement for ethical and spiritual self-refinement. With a special focus on teshuva, we’ll explore Rabbi Yisrael’s revolutionary insight that grand, sweeping resolutions for total transformation are counterproductive — and that real change comes through small, sustainable steps aimed at one specific character trait at a time. Along the way, we’ll examine his piercing critique of interpersonal ethics, his pioneering insight into the subconscious forces that drive human behavior, and the foundational texts he championed — concluding with a fascinating episode involving the Chofetz Chaim himself.
September 8, 2026 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Mussar Masters on Teshuva: Simcha Zissel (Alter) of Kelm
Mussar Masters on Teshuva: Simcha Zissel (Alter) of Kelm
Class description
Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, founder of the Mussar movement, is said to have described his three foremost disciples each in a single word — and each went on to embody that word in a different corner of 19th-century Lithuanian Jewry. Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv, “the Alter of Kelm,” was the sage, building an entirely new kind of Talmud Torah around disciplined, unflinching self-scrutiny — and weathering the charge that his intensity echoed the very Hasidism the Mitnagdim had spent a century resisting. Rabbi Naftali Amsterdam was the pietist, the quietest and least publicly ambitious of the three, whose legacy rests less on institutions or books than on a life of humility so exacting it occasionally unsettled even those closest to him. And Rabbi Yitzchak Blazer, “Reb Itzele Peterburger,” was the scholar — Chief Rabbi of St. Petersburg at twenty-five, builder of the Kovno Kollel, and, through his Or Yisrael, the man most responsible for preserving Salanter’s own words for posterity, even as he absorbed the movement’s sharpest public rebuffs, from Volozhin to the Hebrew press. Together, their three paths — sage, pietist, and scholar — trace the shape of the Mussar movement itself: one teacher’s vision, refracted through three very different lives.
This class focuses on the Alter of Kelm. Next week we will discuss Rav Naftali and Reb Itzele.
September 15, 2026 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Mussar Masters on Teshuva: Mussar Masters 03 – Yitzchak Blazer and Naftali Amsterdam
Mussar Masters on Teshuva: Mussar Masters 03 – Yitzchak Blazer and Naftali Amsterdam
Class description
Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, founder of the Mussar movement, is said to have described his three foremost disciples each in a single word — and each went on to embody that word in a different corner of 19th-century Lithuanian Jewry. Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv, “the Alter of Kelm,” was the sage, building an entirely new kind of Talmud Torah around disciplined, unflinching self-scrutiny — and weathering the charge that his intensity echoed the very Hasidism the Mitnagdim had spent a century resisting. Rabbi Naftali Amsterdam was the pietist, the quietest and least publicly ambitious of the three, whose legacy rests less on institutions or books than on a life of humility so exacting it occasionally unsettled even those closest to him. And Rabbi Yitzchak Blazer, “Reb Itzele Peterburger,” was the scholar — Chief Rabbi of St. Petersburg at twenty-five, builder of the Kovno Kollel, and, through his Or Yisrael, the man most responsible for preserving Salanter’s own words for posterity, even as he absorbed the movement’s sharpest public rebuffs, from Volozhin to the Hebrew press. Together, their three paths — sage, pietist, and scholar — trace the shape of the Mussar movement itself: one teacher’s vision, refracted through three very different lives.
This class discusses Rav Naftali and Rev Itzele
September 22, 2026 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Mussar Masters on Teshuva: Mussar Masters on Teshuva
Mussar Masters on Teshuva: Mussar Masters on Teshuva
Class description
Rabbi David Sedley lives in Jerusalem with his wife and six children. He was born and raised in New Zealand before coming to Israel in 1989. He left Israel temporarily (for eight years) to serve as a communal Rabbi in Scotland and England and returned to Israel in 2004. His latest book is "The Elephant of Deliberate Forgetfulness: and other unexpected interpretations of the weekly Torah reading". He has also translated Rabbeinu Yonah's commentary on Pirkei Avos and is the co-author of Sefiros: Spiritual Refinement Through Counting the Omer (both Judaica Press). Over the years Rabbi Sedley has worked as a journalist, a translator, a video director and in online reputation management. He also writes a weekly Torah blog on the Times of Israel.