Place
Novardok נובהרדוק
The other face of mussar: not the greatness of man but his smallness — with exercises that break the fear of what others think.
R. Yosef Yozel Horowitz taught the exact opposite of Slabodka: a person is small, and his self-regard is in the way. Novardok students deliberately did things that made them look ridiculous, so as to stop depending on how they were seen.
The Slabodka–Novardok argument was serious and settled nothing: they said these were two medicines for one illness and neither suited everyone. The Novardok network of yeshivas was the most widely branched in Eastern Europe; after the war it continued in Israel and France.
On the timeline
5602 · 1842 CEMussar in the yeshivas: from Salanter's circles to Slabodka5701 · 1941 CEThe End of the Yeshiva World of Eastern Europe
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Madregat ha-Adam — R. Yosef Yozel's book — the statement of Novardok mussar
Basis: documents and evidence.