Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar

by Alan Morinis

Mussar is the spiritual discipline of becoming a mensch.

Alan Morinis’ book, Everyday Holiness: the Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar, brings this 1,000-year-old tradition to life for modern audiences.

Mussar practice – a blend of study, meditation, introspection and action – was originally passed from student to teacher. The practice virtually died out with the Holocaust.

Morinis himself discovered Mussar at one of the lowest points of his life. Working as a filmmaker, writer and producer, he was riding a comet of success – until a film failed. He was forced to confront the fact that the man he had become was far, far from the man he had planned to become.

From his early days as a student of spiritual pilgrimages, he had become a venture capitalist and a film producer -- and now, apparently, he was a failure.

Having been raised in a secular Jewish home in Toronto, it is ironic that Judaism became his lifeline out of depression. As he studied Judaism, he discovered Mussar.

Mussar asks students to identify key traits they wish to perfect. Each week, a Mussar student selects one trait to focus on. The traits fall along a continuum. Take humility, for example. Too little humility creates people with big egos, who speak too much and listen too little and believe they know everything. On the other hand, too much humility creates people who are self-effacing and don't share their ideas and talents with the world. A student must decide whether he or she needs more or less of a trait.

The practice of Mussar involves studying the trait, keeping a daily journal about one's behavior, meditating on the trait and meeting with a teacher and study partners for discussion.

In 1997, Morinis found teachers – Rabbi Yechiel Yitzchok Perr and Rebbetzin Shoshana Perr. Seven years later, he founded the Mussar Institute.

“Everyone of us is assigned to master something in our lives,” Morinis writes. “You have already been given your assignment and you have already encountered it, though you may not be aware that what faces you is a curriculum, nor that this is the central task of your life. My purpose in this book is to help you wake up to your personal curriculum and to guide your steps toward mastering."

Everyday Holiness offers those of us who don’t have access to a teacher a map for practicing Mussar.

The book unfolds in three parts. Part I, “The Inner World of the Soul,” describes Mussar. Part II, “The Map,” discusses 18 “soul traits.” These are qualities such as humility, patience, gratitude, simplicity, loving-kindness and enthusiasm. Part III, “The Route,” covers how Mussar is practiced.

Morinis has written a book that is engaging to read and entices us to begin our own study of menschkeit.

About the Author: Alan Morinis (1949 - )

Before becoming a leading figure in the revival of the Mussar movement, Alan Morinis was an anthropologist, filmmaker and writer.

As a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, he studied anthropology, specializing in the study of religious pilgrimages, especially in Hinduism. He wrote Pilgrimage in the Hindu Tradition: A Case Study of West Bengal.

Morinis grew up in a secular Jewish home in Toronto. He studied under Rabbi Yechiel Perr, which led him to discover the Musar movement.  He wrote about his experience in Climbing Jacob's Ladder. He went on to found the Mussar Institute, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and to write two other books on Mussar: this one and Every Day, Holy Day.