MUSAR MOVEMENT. The Musar movement for individual self-examination and ethical renewal spread among mid-nineteenth-century Lithuanian Jewry after its founding by Yisraʾel Salanter (1810–1883). So called from the Hebrew term musar ("ethics, instruction"), the Musar movement can be viewed as one of the first attempts in eastern Europe to organize traditionalist circles within Jewish society in modern forms, although its long-term legacy and influence remained limited to the Lithuanian yeshivot.

The Musar ideology was formed during the young Yisraʾel Salanter's fifteen-year sojourn in Salant during the 1820s and 1830s. There, in addition to achieving mastery of Talmud in the standard manner, Salanter came under the influence of the saintly reclusive figure Yosef Zundel of Salant. Zundel devoted his attention to the ethical aspects of Jewish law, which in his view had been neglected. He believed that in order to overcome the temptations of evil, special actions...