Rabbi Yisrael Salanter רבי ישראל סלנטר
founder of the Mussar movement of character work
Rabbi Yisrael Lipkin of Salant was an outstanding Talmudist who was offered the finest rabbinical posts and refused them. Something else occupied him: he saw men who knew the entire Talmud and were nonetheless quick-tempered, touchy, careless in small honesties. Knowledge does not automatically become conduct.
He built a system. Daily study of ethical works — «Mesillat Yesharim», «Duties of the Heart» — aloud, in a melody, at dusk, so the words reach feeling rather than memory. Work on one trait at a time, with review. Dedicated «Mussar houses» outside the yeshiva. Later it entered the Lithuanian yeshivas themselves, in the office of the mashgiach, responsible not for learning but for character.
His standards of honesty were absolute, and he taught that attending to another person's material needs is spiritual work. During the cholera epidemic of 5608 he ruled that people should eat on Yom Kippur for their health, and by tradition did so publicly in the synagogue himself.
His last years were spent in Germany and France, trying to hold Western Jewish youth to tradition.