Rav Naftali Amsterdam רבי נפתלי אמסטרדם
the humblest of Salanter's three great students
His trade was the rabbinate, his dream the bakery: he seriously trained to bake, so as to live by his hands and burden no one—and the rabbinate of Helsingfors he later recalled as a trial, not an honor. Such was Salanter's mussar neat: the fear of honor stronger than the fear of poverty.
His famous sigh—the head of the Sha'agat Aryeh, the heart of the Yesod ve-Shoresh ha-Avodah, the character of my teacher—Salanter cut short: Naftali, with your own head, your own heart, your own character—serve as you. Mussar repeats that correction to this day.
In 1906 he went up to Jerusalem—an old man among the students of students, a living link to Salanter—and there died ten years on, just short of the end of the war that overturned his whole world.
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Or Yisrael and the traditions of the mussar houses — Salanter's three students; the sigh and the teacher's correction
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — Kovno, Helsingfors, Jerusalem; 1832–1916
Basis: Talmud and midrash.