A century after the Alter of Novardok’s passing, his vision remains a living legacy

Photos: Mishpacha archives

A hundred years is a long time by any measure, and this past Kislev marked the passage of a century since a monumental master of mussar, Rav Yosef Yozel Hurwitz ztz”l — known for posterity as the Alter of Novardok — left the world, having died as he lived, selflessly tending to ailing students during a 1919 typhus outbreak in Kiev.

The Jewish world he knew, wracked by war and poverty and fragmented by the heresies of Communism and Haskalah, is long gone. And yet, a century later, the Alter still lives.

His worldview has been perpetuated in places like France, where a prime disciple, Rav Gershon Liebman ztz”l, founded a veritable empire of mussar that continues to this day, and in the United States, where Rav Yechiel Perr, who heads Far Rockaway’s Yeshiva Derech Ayson, has long been a leading exponent of the teachings of the mussar movement generally and of its Novardok school in particular.

Through Rabbi Perr’s rebbetzin, who is the Alter’s great-granddaughter, Rabbi Perr became his scion, too. And as we sit in his office a few days after the Alter’s hundredth yahrtzeit on the 17th of Kislev, he notes a seeming disparity. “Rav Yitzchok Orlansky, who was the Alter’s talmid, told me that at age 18, he was present at a Shabbos Shuvah derashah the Alter delivered in Petersburg. It lasted four hours, and, he recalled, ‘Mir hoben azoi gelacht az mir hoben gehalten bei di zeiten — we laughed so much we had to hold our sides.’ I’ve also heard the Alter described as someone who was lo pasak milsa d’bedichusa mipumei — he always had a humorous line at the ready, and that he was such a baal regesh that he’d become frozen to the spot, transfixed, when he heard music playing.”

Yet the Alter also exemplified extremism, teaching that one must go all out in breaking bad middos, in rejecting the emptiness of materialism and honor-seeking, and in developing trust in Hashem. It’s how he lived and what he expected of his students. “Az m’kehn nit ariber, muz mehn ariber — When one can’t go above, one must go above” was just one of his many sayings that roused talmidim to overcome adversity — whether posed by one’s own nature or by Russian Communists — and indeed, to rise above.

To convey a sense of that intensive, rarified Novardoker atmosphere of striving, Rabbi Perr mentions a memory that Rabbi Elya Jurkanski, a longtime rebbi in Brooklyn’s Mirrer Yeshiva, once shared. At the time, he was a 12-year-old talmid in the central Novardoker yeshivah in Bialystok: “We learned all day, and there wasn’t anything to eat,” Rabbi Jurkanski remembers. “One night, I’d gone to sleep on a bench in the beis medrash, and my rosh havaad woke me up to tell me, ‘Elya, I found an apple for you.’

“I said, ‘I don’t need food — I only need ruchniyus.’ I’m telling you this so you should understand what it was like there.”

So, Rabbi Perr asks, is it a contradiction in terms to portray the Alter as exuding joie de vivre, yet possessing an intense drive to climb ever higher up the rungs of the spiritual? “No,” he says in answer to his own question. “I once asked my wife’s zeide, Rav Avraham Yafen, who was the Alter’s son-in-law and successor, whether the uncompromising views the Alter propounded in his sefer were a product of his personality. He replied that in temperament the Alter was like everyone else, but he believed that to be effective, it’s necessary to be extreme rather than middle-of-the-road. I later found that the Chazon Ish, too, wrote an essay in which he speaks of the obligation to educate our youth to be extreme because, he says, without extremism, a person does not feel the vigor and the beauty of what he’s doing. He acknowledges that this will have negative results because people won’t know where to draw the line, but that’s nevertheless how we have to be mechanech.

“I regret not discussing with Rav Avraham Yafen whether it was the conditions of the times that made extremism so necessary,” Rabbi Perr continues. “It was, after all, an era when Communism and Haskalah were ascendant, and all everyone spoke about was the dawning of a new utopian world where Jews would finally be treated as human beings. The Alter was very concerned that the Haskalah was simply walking away with the youth.”

It’s also important to realize, adds Rabbi Perr, that all mussar is extreme in its essence, demanding high standards of ethical excellence. Kelm, for example, may be regarded as more moderate than Novardok, but only in relative terms.

The Chevron mashgiach, Rav Yehuda Leib Chasman, who was a product of Kelm, once spoke in the Slabodka yeshivah and said, “There are storekeepers in Kelm who are on a higher madreigah than you are.”

He knew of what he spoke, because he and his wife had once operated a store in Kelm that sold flour. Once, in the middle of the business day, he went to speak with his rebbi, Rav Simcha Zissel Ziv, the Alter of Kelm. During the conversation, Rav Leib put his hand on his rebbi’s arm. When they finished, Rav Simcha Zissel remarked, “Your hand is so floury,” and began wiping that sleeve with the other one. But looking at his hand, Rav Leib saw it was clean — and understood Rav Simcha Zissel was telling him that his involvement in business had gone over the line. Rather than reenter the store, he sent his wife a note that read, “We’re selling.”

Rabbi Perr’s father-in-law, Rav Yehuda Leib Nekritz, once shared with him an insight of Rav Yitzchok Valdshein, known in Novardok circles as “the Shershever.” A grandson-in-law of the Alter, it was he who transcribed the latter’s mussar lectures to produce his masterwork, Madreigas Ha’Adam. “Mussar,” the Shershever said, “is understanding everything as it really is.”

Once we understand mussar in that way, as a very down-to-earth, very real way to look at life, Rabbi Perr observes, we can begin to see the value of the extreme approach, because it too partakes of those attributes. “To say that if you’re not going to change now, you’re never going to change — that’s extreme, but also very realistic. The idea that a person can’t just go on fooling himself with compromises and half-measures, but must instead ingrain change in himself with specific actions designed to effect change — in Novardok, they called them pe’ulos — that’s real, it’s how life really is.”