Novardok Yeshiva
Talmudical and philosophical formation center
The Novardok Yeshiva was a large yeshiva in pre-World War II Europe, and a force within the Mussar movement. It was the first of hundreds of Mussar yeshivas which were all called Novardok yeshivas.
The yeshiva was established in Novogrudok, Minsk Governorate, Russian Empire in 1896, under the direction of Yosef Yozel Horwitz, a rabbi known as the Alter fun Novardok, "the elder of Novardok" in Yiddish.
Novardok yeshivas were opened in major cities including Kyiv, Kharkiv, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, Zhytomyr, Berdychiv, Tsaritsyn (now Volgograd), Saratov, Plogid, and Chernihiv. Influenced by the Alter, his students also created yeshivas in Kherson, Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Kamieniec-Podolski, Berdichev, Nikolaev, Bălţi, Odessa, Piotrków Trybunalski and other places.
Self-humiliation
Students of Novardok participated in deliberately humiliating behaviour, such as wearing old, patched clothing, or going to a shop and asking for a product not sold there, such as screws in a bakery. All Novardok students would share their personal belongings with friends to rid themselves of their desires for worldly possessions.
History
Early history
Some students came to Novardok yeshiva from as far as the Caucasus.
At first, The Alter served as both the rosh yeshiva and mashgiach of the yeshiva, delivering shiurim in Gemara and mussar. In time, though, he appointed others to deliver the Gemara shiurim, while he focused on developing the mussar aspect of the yeshiva.
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This entry incorporates text from “Novardok Yeshiva” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.