Musar Movement - Origin of The Movement

Origin of The Movement

This movement began among non-Hasidic Jews as a response to the social changes brought about by The Enlightenment, and the corresponding Haskalah movement among many European Jews. In this period of history anti-Semitism, assimilation of many Jews into Christianity, poverty, and the poor living conditions of many Jews in the Pale of Settlement caused severe tension and disappointment. Many of the institutions of Lithuanian Jewry were beginning to break up. Many religious Jews felt that their way of life was slipping away from them, observance of traditional Jewish law and custom was on the decline, and what they felt was worst of all, many of those who remained loyal to the tradition were losing their emotional connection to the tradition's inner meaning and ethical core.

Read more about this topic:  Musar Movement

Famous quotes containing the words origin of, origin and/or movement:

    The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge.
    Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)

    We have got rid of the fetish of the divine right of kings, and that slavery is of divine origin and authority. But the divine right of property has taken its place. The tendency plainly is towards ... “a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.”
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    There is no example in history of a revolutionary movement involving such gigantic masses being so bloodless.
    Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)