Our Jewish past can teach us how to be better

• Published date: 27 September 2021
• Author: MAURICE J. ELIAS
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The development of character – the focus of musar – has been of interest throughout recorded history. One can view the Bible as an extended character study, elaborated explicitly in Pirkei Avot and further extended in the writings of Maimonides. As Maimonides put it: "The moral man will remain always aware of his dispositions and will evaluate his actions, and will inquire every day into the traits of his soul, and whenever he perceives his soul tending toward one of the extremes, he will hurry to remedy it and not allow the evil trait to strengthen itself through the repetition of bad actions" (Maimonides, 1168).

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The idea that assessing and reflecting on one's character is seen as the best method of improving character is not new but is easier to sermonize about than facilitate. It might surprise you to know that the first prominent system for character assessment was created by Benjamin Franklin in the mid-1700s.

A lesser-known but equivalent system was created by Menachem Mendel Levin (sometimes written Lefin) in Poland in 1812: The Accounting of the Soul. A Guide to Self-Improvement and Character Refinement.

As recounted in the pages of this magazine (Benjamin Franklin's Virtues, 5/18/20. pp. 33-35), it is likely that Levin knew of Franklin's basic approach. However, his book (reprinted in 1995 by Feldheim Publishers) provides a practical and in some ways very modern approach to putting Franklin's ideas into action. Let's look at this assessment system and its practical application in our time.

Adopt a modern philosophy

Franklin and Levin both expressed what is now referred to as the philosophy of a growth mindset. This means that character is not a set of inborn and immutable traits, but rather consists of a number of attributes that can and should be cultivated and modified as needed. However, this is easier said than done. Exhortations to do the right thing always has been much more successful in theory than in practice.

So Levin built on Franklin's ideas and his own trenchant observations of human behavior to devise a system that seems quite modern in its reflection of the psychology of learning and change.

Determine aspects of character that need to be developed Franklin and Levin literally believed in the idea of "accounting": determining what the "accounts" were and then creating a system for tallying so that there could be no doubt about the status of one' character at the end of a given period of time. Writing in very different...