Rav Dessler: The life and impact of Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler
by Jonathan Rosenblum
ArtScroll/Mesorah Publications $
Reviewed by Rabbi Joseph Elias
The Jewish Observer
January 1,
Twelve years are not a long period in which to make one’s mark in the world. In the beginning of this biography, Jonathan Rosenblum points out that Rabbi Dessler’s public life stretched over no more than twelve years – from , when he came to Gateshead to found its Kollel, to his petira (passing) in in Bnei Brak, when he had moved to become the Mashgiach of Ponovezh Yeshiva. Yet during this period he played an extraordinary role in the growth of Torah Jewry, leaving a lasting imprint on posterity.
Our Sages stress that men of great stature are rare, and therefore Divine Providence scatters them through the ages. Rabbi Dessler was such an outstanding personality – and he was chosen to live in a remarkable period and to make a seminal contribution to it. Rosenblum, who has previously earned our gratitude for his outstanding biography of Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetzky, among other writings, has succeeded in this work to capture the essence of his subject.
Rabbi Dessler
Rav Dessler on the Parasha
In over a thousand lectures throughout his lifetime of teaching, the renowned master of mussar, Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler offered countless inspiring and original insights into the ethics and philosophy of Torah Judaism. His shiurim were issued posthumously in a series of five Hebrew volumes entitled Michtav Me’Eliyahu, prepared by Rabbi Aryeh Carmell, one of Rabbi Dessler’s foremost disciples in England (in collaboration with Rabbi Solomon A. Halpern of London and Rabbi Chaim Friedlander of Bnei Brak). Michtav Me’Eliyahu has become a classic of modern Torah thought, widely read and studied.
Rabbi Carmell then went on to render into matchless English selected essays from the Hebrew work, which became a six-part series entitled Strive for Truth! This series which was received with resounding acclaim, introduces us to some of Rabbi Dessler’s basic ideas and penetrating insights on the confusing, bewildering world around us.
The essays in this volume, comprising Parts 5 and 6 of Strive for Truth! apply Rabbi Dessler’s penetrating mussar concepts to the weekly Torah portions, as well as to segments of the Book of Prophets and the W
Reprinted from The Jewish Religion: A Companion, published by Oxford University Press.
Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler was a religious thinker and prominent figure in the Musar movement (). Dessler was born in Homel in Russia where he received a traditional Jewish education leading to his rabbinic ordination, semikhah. After trying his hand, unsuccessfully, in business, Dessler obtained a rabbinic position in the East End of London.
He was later instrumental in establishing in the town of Gateshead a kolel, an institution in which married men with families are supported by patrons of learning while they devote themselves entirely to advanced Talmudic studies on the Lithuanian pattern; an institution now popular everywhere in the ultra-Orthodox world, but, at that time, unheard of in England.
Dessler used to say that even the Orthodox Jews in England looked upon members of the Kolel as if they were Martians newly arrived on the planet. Dessler, though the principal of the kolel, received no salary from the institution, earning his living by privately teaching the sons of Jews who were concerned that the young men should be trained in the old-style Talmudic learning. Dessler lat
Paraphrased from Eliyahu E. Dessler, Strive for Truth: The Selected Writings of Rabbi E.E. Dessler, Part Two, translated into English and annotated by Aryeh Carmell (Jerusalem: Feldheim Publishers, ), pp.
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