Israel Salanter

Israel Salanter (actually: Israel Lipkin ; born on November 3, 1810 in Žagarė , Russian Empire , today Lithuania ; died on February 2, 1883 in Königsberg i. Pr. ) Was a Jewish scholar , Talmudist , rabbi and founder of the religious-ethical school Mussar . He called for a more intensive connection between halacha and ethics in the theory and everyday practice of orthodoxy .

Teaching and life

Israel Salanter was the son of a rabbi, received a traditional Jewish education and studied the Talmud. According to the customs of the time, he married the daughter of a respected man in Salant at the age of 13 . After this city, where he learned and taught for many years as a student of Rabbi Hirsch Braude and Rabbi Sundel, he received his name, by which he is known to this day. In addition to the Jewish religion, he also studied philosophy, mathematics and natural sciences.

Salanter's most important concern was moral purification, self-knowledge and self-improvement. Neither rabbinical studies alone nor Hasidism corresponded to his idea, while flight from the world and renunciation are much more suitable for perfecting oneself. He considered joy and happiness to be sinful recklessness.

At the same time as the Jewish Enlightenment wanted to break the chains of tradition, Israel urged Salanter to observe the religious commandments. As head of the Ramailes - Yeshiva (named after Rabbi Mailo) in Vilnius began in 1840, groups for the study of Mussar to form, but a quirky partly developed understanding of religious rules by z. B. in the cholera year 1848 repealed the fasting law on Yom Kippur and ate a meal publicly in the synagogue.

In the same year he moved to Kovno , where he withdrew into solitude and studied intensively, later he lived in various European cities ( Königsberg , Memel , Paris ) and always tried to popularize the study of the Talmud.

In Memel he published the magazine Hatewuna ("Die Vernunft") in 1861 .

His son Lipman Lipkin (1842–1875) was a well-known mathematician and inventor.

Works (selection)

• Sepher Mesilath Jescharim , Königsberg 1858 ( Luzzatto edition)
• Imre bina , 1878 (presentation of his basic teachings)
• Ez peri , 1880
• Ewen Jisroel , Warsaw 1883 ("Stone Israels")

literature

• E. Binjamin: R. Isr. Lipkin Salant. 1899.
• J. Blaser: Or Yisrael. 1900.
• HN Maggid: Ir Wilna. 1900.
• S. Rosenfeld: R. Israel Salanter. 1911 (Hebrew).
• Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography. Vol. IV, Orient Printer, Chernivtsi 1930.
• Isaak Markon: LIPKIN, ISRAEL. In: Georg Herlitz (Hrsg.): Jüdisches Lexikon . Vol. III, Jewish publishing house, Berlin 1927.
• Menachem G. Glenn: Rabbi Israel Salanter. Religious-Ethical Thinker. The Story of a Religious-Ethical Current In Nineteenth Century Judaism. 1953.
• Yizhak Ahren : Rabbi Israel Salanter and the unconscious. In: Udim , Volume 6, 1975-76, pp. 9-11
• Immanuel Etkes: Rabbi Israel Salanter and the Mussar Movement. Seeking the Torah of Truth. The Jewish Publication Society, 1993, ISBN 0-82-760438-6 .