How do you become the kind of person who naturally lives a holy life? Everyday Holiness by Alan Morinis is one of my favorite Jewish books because instead of focusing primarily on what you should do, it asks who you are becoming. In this video, we’re talking about Mussar, middot, and the practical system Judaism gives us for working on our character, one small change at a time.
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Transcript below.
Transcript:
How do you become a person who naturally lives a holy life? We’re gonna talk today about one of my favorite Jewish books, Everyday Holiness by Alan Morinis. Most Jewish books teach you what to do. This one asks, “Who are you becoming?” Hi, I’m Kochava. I’m a Jewish convert, and I’ve been helping people convert to Judaism since 2010 through my blog, buildingajewishlife.com.
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It’s a really common misconception that Judaism is all about the rules. And yeah, there’s a lot of rules, but what’s the point of the rules? They’re to make you holy. They’re to make you a better person, helping you reach your full potential.
Finally learning the rules and figuring out how to implement them is just the beginning of the work. This book helps you with what comes next, but don’t let it fool you, this is a relatively beginner-friendly book as well. I think it’s appropriate for anyone at any stage of the Jewish journey. And in fact, Mr.
Morinis runs the, the Mussar Institute, which is a website you can go to, and you can take classes in this methodology, and those classes are open even to non-Jews who are just curious about ancient Jewish wisdom. So this isn’t a Halacha book, Jewish law. It’s more broadly in that genre of self-improvement, personal growth.
And I have worked with a lot of people who are converting over the years, and we are a self-improvement bunch. Why else would we convert to Judaism? We’re trying to make ourselves into our best selves. So I find myself recommending this book over and over again, and it was about time that I recommended it on here.
This is a book about Mussar. You might hear some people pronounce it Mussar. So Mussar is a system for ethical self-improvement. It’s framed around the concept of Middot, character traits. A Middah is the singular, so one Middah, two Middot, and these are things that’ll be familiar to you. In fact, I’ll read from the book some of the ones that they cover in this book: humility, patience, gratitude, compassion, order, faith, equanimity, honor, simplicity.
That’s about half of them. But the word Middah doesn’t exactly mean character trait. The word middah actually means measure. And so what we’re doing with mussar is measuring these qualities in ourselves and learning how to improve them in the directions we want them to go. Anger is also a middah, so is jealousy.
We all have a middah of stinginess in certain circumstances, and we all have a middah of generosity in other circumstances. Where does our balance lie? Mussar means finding that out about yourself and then taking steps to improve it, to make yourself holier. It is the best system I have found for becoming more like the person Hashem created you to be.
These are practices that go back to around the year 1000, but it was solidified and kind of codified into the system we use today by a rabbi in the 1800s. But we have texts on this topic and the essential framework going back to around the year 1000. Mussar practice has continued all this time in yeshivas, Torah schools primarily for young men, and it wasn’t always looked on very positively.
Oftentimes, mussar has been passed down as something full of shame and guilt, focusing on what a bad person you are, and having a teacher make you feel like a very bad person. I have met many men who went through yeshivas that had a mussar practice, and they hate the word mussar. That’s does not speak well for how we have handled this as a community.
I think it is working very much in the last 20 years at a minimum to change, but it has entered the larger Jewish zeitgeist through Mr. Morinis’ work and this book specifically, which came out in the early 2000s. What I like about this book is that it’s positive. It is not that guilt and shame Mussar of 50 years ago.
It is an empowering, positive way of looking at yourself and working on yourself, and it’s insanely practical and down to earth. You know me, your girl is practical. I love practical things that can be broken down into steps. It focuses on how small changes matter, which is also the mission of this channel, is teaching you that small changes matter and are really the only true way to sustainable change.
Tiny habits done consistently. That’s the framework in a nutshell here. And the best part is nobody graduates. You can reread this book infinitely. I don’t reread books as a general rule ’cause I have way too many books to read and I don’t have time to go back. I’m a big fat nerd. But this is a book I reread.
I have probably reread it at least eight times, and every time I get something different out of it. It helps you set up a practice that is sustainable and easy to maintain, but is also flexible enough that it can handle if you fall off the wagon for a few months or even a few years, as I have done. You can always pick right up right where you left off, but each time you’re starting from a different starting point, so you’ll have a different journey, which means you can never outgrow it.
It is a practice that will always be available to you and useful to you. I will warn you though, people will love it or hate it. A lot of people out there will hate it because it’s uncomfortable. The work of self-improvement and change is uncomfortable. This is not abstract philosophy. You will probably see yourself in examples that you wish you didn’t, but that is how you start to change.
But I find that this is a gentle approach to that discomfort, not like the old teachers back in the yeshivas. And if you’re new to Jewish practice, try out this video next for what is the first Jewish practice you should start.
