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the goldilocks principle
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Mussar is a discipline of steady personal character refinement.
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middah of the week
Control your appetites in all things.
Moderation is finding a balance in all things and is crucial in healthy living. Going overboard in anything is one way that this trait is imbalanced, while depriving oneself is another. By experiencing everything in moderate amounts, one can live more wholesomely and find true balance.
author's blog
mussar and the garden of eden
How many hours every day go into fixing, cleaning, upgrading, improving, reconfiguring, and maintaining the things and aspects of your life? You commit so much time, thought, and effort because you are born with an impulse to improve.
-Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness, ch. 2, “What is Mussar?”
A generous heart
The theme of nadiv lev, a generous or noble heart reverberates throughout Parashat Vayakhel, and really throughout the entire account of building the Mishkan [tabernacle] in Exodus 25 through 40.
mussar: parts of the soul
The neshammah (lifebreath) of man is the lamp of Hashem, revealing all his inmost parts (Proverbs 20:27).
The lamp pictured is an ancient oil lamp, a clay vessel with a wick placed in olive oil giving light like a candle. The inmost parts literally are the “rooms of the belly.” There are two basic points made in this verse: God has a light inside each one of us and he sees all that is within.
Moshe Rabbenu teaches loving-kindness
Parashat Ki Tisa (Ex. 30:11-34:35) includes Hashem’s revelation of his glory to Moses, the thirteen attributes of God, opening with the words, “Adonai! Adonai! a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, full of chesed v’emet—loving-kindness and truth” (Ex. 34:6). Earlier, in the Ten Words, Hashem had declared that he would show chesed to “thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Ex. 20:6). Chesed is an aspect of God’s character, an aspect that gets sorely tested in this parasha, when Israel builds the Golden Calf. But this same story also reveals the possibilities of chesed on a human level in the example of Moses.
riverton mussar concept
The Riverton Mussar concept was formed out of years of questioning how better to be a light of Mashiach Yeshua in a very practical and everyday manner. Over the course of reading and studying, I stumbled upon the concept of Mussar, or Jewish ethics as it is also known. As I saw the amazing practicality and profound spiritual connection it provided through honing character traits, I felt like two worlds just harmoniously came together: the world of the Mussar masters and our Mashiach Yeshua.
middot gallery
Click on an image to bring you to the middah description.
The highlighted middah is this week's.
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