Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler - Influence and Ideas

Influence and Ideas

While it is difficult to determine which teachers had most influence on Rabbi Dessler, it is apparent that he is a child of the yeshiva world of the early 20th century, which was then influenced heavily by the ethical Mussar movement, but has similarly gained proficiency in Kabbalah and works of Hasidic Judaism and Jewish philosophy. His method in interpreting tenets of Jewish philosophy reveals an adherence to the principles of the Maharal (Rabbi Loeb of Prague, 16th century). Another major influence appears to have been the 19th century Hasidic work, Tanya.

Most of Rabbi Dessler's work has reached the public through the pupils he reared in England and Israel. Together, they edited his collected correspondence and ethical writings posthumously in the six-volume Michtav me-Eliyahu ("Letter from Elijah" which alludes to the letter that the prophet Elijah sent to the King of Judah that arrived after Elijah ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire), later translated into English and published as "Strive for Truth". This work is now widely studied and quoted in Orthodox Jewish circles.

Perhaps one of the most influential ideas, discussed in an essay in the first volume of Michtav me-Eliyahu entitled Kuntres ha-Chesed (Heb. קונטרס החסד "Pamphlet of Lovingkindness), is the "Jewish philosophy of love." He observes that the perfect love from the point of view of Jewish philosophy is not "give and take" but focuses exclusively on giving. This idea is quoted often and has been developed by many religious thinkers.

Other remarkable points are his stance against preoccupation with materialism and technology, which, in his view, distance mankind from spirituality.

One well known idea of his, expounded on in Michtav meEliyahu, is the Nekudas Habechira (point of free will). He states that everyone has a point in his service to G-d where he has to fight his evil inclination and other points where he there will be no battle, some where he will always give in to his evil inclination and some where he will always win over his evil inclination, and that this point moves as he learns to overcome his evil inclination or as he give in to it. For example, someone who adheres to Orthodox Judaism will have no problem keeping kosher, but may sometimes be tempted to rely on unreliable kosher supervision, while somebody farther away from religious practice will have to struggle with whether to eat a ham sandwich (which is non-kosher regardless of supervision).