Sefaria
Sefaria is an online open source, free content, digital library of Jewish texts. It was founded in 2011 by former Google project manager Brett Lockspeiser and journalist-author Joshua Foer. Promoted as a "living library of Jewish texts", Sefaria ...
is a book of
Musar literature
Musar literature is didactic Jewish ethical literature which describes virtues and vices and the path towards character improvement. This literature gives the name to the Musar movement, in 19th century Lithuania, but this article considers such ...
(ethics in
Rabbinic Judaism
Rabbinic Judaism (), also called Rabbinism, Rabbinicism, Rabbanite Judaism, or Talmudic Judaism, is rooted in the many forms of Judaism that coexisted and together formed Second Temple Judaism in the land of Israel, giving birth to classical rabb ...
) first published in
Constantinople
Constantinople (#Names of Constantinople, see other names) was a historical city located on the Bosporus that served as the capital of the Roman Empire, Roman, Byzantine Empire, Byzantine, Latin Empire, Latin, and Ottoman Empire, Ottoman empire ...
in 1824 by
Eliezer Papo
Rabbi Eliezer Papo (1785–1828) was the rabbi of the community of Silistra in the Ottoman Empire (modern-day Bulgaria). He is famous for writing the '' Pele Yoetz'', a work of musar (ethical) literature which gives advice on how to behave as a ...
.Jewish pilgrims flock to Bulgarian holy site /ref>
The work is a "classical moral treatise", and compilation of essential Jewish concepts, organized with its topics following the order of the
Hebrew alphabet
The Hebrew alphabet (, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is a unicase, unicameral abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably ...
. It is written in a style that "speaks to the heart as well as the mind".
The ''Musar'' that it presents is not limited to abstract ethical precepts and esoteric concepts; rather it encompasses all aspects and phases of day-to-day Jewish living: the ritual as well as the ethical, the mundane as well as the sublime. It also offers advice on human interrelationships such as between parent and child, husband and wife, employer and employee.