The Alter of Novardok: A Yahrtzeit Tribute Tonight

By Rabbi Yair Hoffman

For many years I would daven with my shver זצ”ל at Beis Yoseph Novardik in Boro Park, where we would often come for Shabbos. This Motzaei Shabbos and Sunday, the 17th of Kislev, marks the yahrtzeit of the Alter of Novardok. What follows is an overview of the Alter and the movement he created.

Early Life and Family

Rav Yosef Yozel Horowitz, known as the Alter of Novardok (or in Hebrew, “the Sabba of Novardok”), was born in 1850 in Plongian, near Shavli (Šiauliai) in Lithuania. His father, Rav Shlomo Zalman Horowitz, was the rav of the town. Young Yosef Yozel displayed exceptional talents from an early age. He acquired his basic education under his father’s supervision and joined the Kelm yeshiva while still very young. By age sixteen, he was already delivering the shiur in the shul of Kurtuvian.

At eighteen, he married a woman from the town of Shvekesna. Tragically, his father-in-law passed away between the engagement and the wedding, and the young Yosef Yozel took upon himself the support of his father-in-law’s widow and eight children, in addition to managing the family textile business.

The Fateful Meeting with Rav Yisroel Salanter

Because of his business commitments, the Alter was a frequent visitor to Memel (Klaipėda). There he met Rav Yisroel Salanter, who was serving as the rav of Memel at that time. After attending a number of Rav Yisroel’s shiurim and meeting with him personally, the Alter made a dramatic decision: he would abandon all his business affairs and dedicate himself entirely to the study of Mussar under his new rebbe’s guidance.

This decision met with some opposition from his father and even from Rav Yisroel Salanter himself, both of whom were concerned about his wife’s reaction. But the Alter assured them, “She has always understood me, and she will understand me this time, too.”

On Rav Yisroel Salanter’s advice, the Alter joined Kovno’s Kollel Perushim, where he studied under Rav Yitzchak Blazer, Rav Naftali Amsterdam, and Rav Avraham Shenker—all talmidim of Rav Yisroel Salanter. He also spent time learning from Rav Chaim Soloveitchik in Brisk. Throughout his life, he would quote many teachings in the name of Rav Avraham Shenker.

The Total Break

The Alter taught that the break from one’s past must be total—not in installments. He would illustrate this with a mashal: Consider a man who decides to keep kosher but cannot afford a new set of dishes, so he buys them one at a time—a new dish per week. By year’s end, instead of a fully kosher set, they will all be treif from mixing with each other. So too, claimed the Alter, do a person’s bad habits overcome his good ones and make them all treif.

“One must sever all ties with his past without a moment’s delay,” he would say. “Why doesn’t a person usually change his lifestyle for the better? Because he’s held back—by character weaknesses, family obligations, earthly desires. All these factors will be with him ten minutes later, a month later, a year later, ten years later, a lifetime later! So if one doesn’t break away from his past this very moment, he never will.”

Years of Seclusion

The Alter eventually brought his wife and children to Kovno, where his wife gave birth to two more children and tragically died in childbirth. After her passing, the Alter divided his children among relatives and secluded himself in the nearby town of Slobodka for one year and nine months, not allowing anyone to enter.

Later, after remarrying, a forest retreat was built for him by Reb Gershon Chirinsky, a lumber merchant, with the assistance of Reb Ovadia Lachman of Berlin, a philanthropist who would go on to fund many of the Alter’s initiatives. The Alter secluded himself there for twelve years, visiting his family only for Shabbos and Yom Tov.

Toward the end of his earlier period of seclusion, the Alter began meeting with Rav Simcha Zissel Ziv, “the Sabba of Kelm,” to discuss matters of Mussar. However, in their methods of self-work and approach to life, they disagreed fundamentally. Rav Simcha Zissel eventually convinced the Alter that one cannot remain secluded and develop alone—one must go out and influence the world.

In 1881, the maskilim published articles ridiculing the Alter’s seclusion. They then threw a bundle of forged banknotes into his yard and informed the police that his hideout was a base for counterfeiting. Providentially, the Alter’s mother came to visit him that day and burned the bundle. When the police stormed his room and broke down the wall, they found nothing suspicious—but they forbade him to live in seclusion.

Establishing the Yeshiva Network

Following his change of perspective after discussions with Rav Simcha Zissel, the Alter embarked on a journey through the large Jewish communities and established batei midrash for Gemara study with Mussar according to his method, funded by the philanthropist Reb Ovadia Lachman of Berlin.

In 1896, he decided that to truly influence his generation, he must open a yeshiva that would serve as a spiritual center for all his activities in spreading Mussar and Torah knowledge. The location chosen was the city of Novardok (Navahrudak), and from it both the yeshiva and his educational philosophy took their name.

The Alter founded a network of kollelim and yeshivos in numerous Polish and Russian towns, including Dvinsk, Minsk, Warsaw, Berdichev, Odessa, Lida, Zetl, Balta, Mykolaiv, Kherson, and Mohyliv-Podilskyi. Once a kollel was established, he would urge his students to establish adjoining yeshivos. The institutions were headed by Rav Yitzchak Blazer.

At its peak, the Novardok yeshiva network numbered approximately 4,000 students and encompassed seventy yeshivos throughout Poland alone.

The Alter adopted two Talmudic expressions as guiding mottos, one directed inward, one outward: “נאה דורש ונאה מקיים”—Preach beautifully and live accordingly—and “יפוצו מעיינותיך חוצה”—Your springs should flow ever outward.

Dispatched from their headquarters in Bialystok, surveillance teams would investigate towns and cities for suitability. Once Bialystok decided on a place, nothing could stop them. Without a single penny, but rich in bitachon, a Rosh Yeshiva and ten bochurim would enter a community, occupy a beis midrash, and learn Torah and Mussar. The local Jews had no choice but to supply them with food and shelter. The bochurim would take to the streets, talk to parents, and recruit children. These yeshivos supplied half the talmidim to Eastern Europe’s famous yeshivos.

No wonder the Chofetz Chaim remarked: “We are sitting and writing seforim, while Reb Yoseif is creating yeshivos.”

The Novardok Approach to Mussar

The Rambam states that spiritual ailments are no different from physical illnesses. One can treat the symptoms, or cure the very source of the illness. Mussar aims at the cause of the spiritual ailment by eradicating evil within the person and replacing it with good.

The Alter taught using a Midrash: Hashem says, “My children, pierce your hearts with a teshuva opening as tiny as the tip of a needle, and I shall open for you a passage wide enough for wagons to pass through.” The Alter asked: Is it possible that we never opened such an opening? Of course we did, he answered. But there are different kinds of holes. One drills a hole into steel, and it remains open forever. But one puts his hand into a bucket of water, also making a hole—yet the moment he removes his hand, the “hole” closes up. Mussar makes the hole permanent.

For the serum of Mussar to be effective, it must be injected with hislahavus—emotional intensity. One cannot be cured and build up immunity against evil by merely reading a Mussar sefer. Only by repeating a Chazal or a Mussar statement with emotional intensity will it become engraved on the heart.

Indeed, when entering a yeshiva during the Mussar session, one might be shocked at the sounds: each ben Torah, in his own way, vociferously attacking his personal weaknesses. One summer a passerby was attracted by the loud voices exploding through the open windows of the Novardok Yeshiva and entered the building. He asked the Alter, “Is this a crazy house?”

“Indeed it is,” replied the Alter. “People enter the yeshiva crazy, and when they leave, they are refined and normal.”

Shviras HaRatzon and the Birze

Novardok demanded shviras haratzon—virtually shattering one’s desires, eradicating any vestige of evil habits. For that purpose, Novardokers would carry notebooks in which they would daily enter records of failures and achievements. Before bedtime, they would check their “bookkeeping” and make plans of action for correcting faults.

One method of “breaking” oneself was by denying oneself the rewards of a sin. For instance, during Shemoneh Esrei, one must be totally immersed in prayers. If an irrelevant thought intruded, they would deny themselves the satisfaction of carrying out that idea.

When Reb Yisroel Yaakov Lubchansky was chosen to succeed his father as Rav of Baranovitch, he was required to deliver a drasha. How shocked the Rebbetzin was when she heard him deliver an entirely different drasha from the one he had prepared! He later confessed that during Mincha Shemoneh Esrei, his prepared drasha kept popping up in his mind, so he denied himself any use of it. Novardok practices what it preaches.

Another distinctive Novardok practice was the birze—a form of debate or mutual critique. As Chaim Shapiro relates: A young Novardoker once approached him wearing a worn, faded suit and said, “You’re wearing a new suit. Even if you could offer me such a suit, I wouldn’t accept it. Tell me — why are you parading a new suit? Just to show off how rich your father is? What stupid ga’avah!”

He then continued, “Why don’t you go out in the street and stretch out your hands and call out to all passers-by: ‘Look at my ten fingers! Marvel at how they operate! Look at my head! My two eyes, two ears. The wonder of me!’ You’d never do it. Who doesn’t have ten fingers, a head, and the rest? Yet when you put on a silly suit made to fit perfectly, you want the whole world to stop and admire it. Big deal! What stupid ga’avah!”

More than just criticizing and tearing the other person apart (in a thoughtful and friendly manner, of course), the birze was also a tool for self-improvement, in the spirit of “אזניך תשמענה דבריך”—let your own ears listen to your own words. In the midst of polishing another’s character, one is bound to ask himself, “And what about me?”

Emunah and Bitachon

If one has emunah, he must also have bitachon—trust that Hashem will supply his needs. If a person works as if everything depends upon his own efforts, it demonstrates a lack of bitachon. Hence bitachon is always pitted against hishtadlus.

The Gemara records a debate on the subject (Berachos 35b): Rav Yishmael calls for normal work involvement, trusting in Hashem for success. Rav Shimon ben Yochai prescribes an extreme approach—all bitachon and no hishtadlus. While the halacha follows Rav Yishmael for the masses, the Alter practiced total bitachon his entire life.

When asked about Abaye’s statement on the same page—”Many attempted to follow Rav Yishmael’s way and succeeded, while many attempted to follow Rav Shimon ben Yochai’s way and failed”—the Alter pointed to the key word “many.” Rav Shimon’s way was surely not for the masses. But individuals can and should reach the ultimate level of bitachon. After “working” upon oneself, individuals can reach total bitachon, completely free of hishtadlus.

The Alter would sign his name “ב.ב.”—for Ba’al Bitachon, “Master of Trust in Hashem.”

So the very elite among Novardoker men would set out on foot to strange communities without a penny in their pockets. They would simultaneously abstain from speech, not asking for a ride or even for food. Upon reaching a town, they would enter the beis midrash and, without a word to anyone, study Torah—relying totally on Hashem for their needs.

The Alter used to talk sarcastically about practicing bitachon with money in the bank “just in case.” He would compare it to learning to swim with one hand tied to a tree “just in case.” That man will never learn how to swim.

His Teachings: Madregas HaAdam

The Alter’s discourses were recorded in the sefer Madregas HaAdam (“The Stature of Man”). The first volume was published in Poltava in 1918 and contained six chapters dealing with the era of the world, the correction of character traits, the clarification of character traits, the paths of teshuvah, choosing life, and the ways of bitachon. A second volume was published in Piotrków in 1921 with six additional chapters on fear and love of Hashem, the pursuit of perfection, the point of truth, the ways of life, the reckoning of justice, and benefiting the public.

One of his famous teachings: “A person should give up his whole future for today, so that he will not waste all his todays for one tomorrow.”

Another teaching reflected his sense of urgency: “When it is necessary to send a letter, I send a telegram. When it is necessary to send a telegram, I send an emissary. When it is necessary to send an emissary, I go myself.”

World War I and the Move to Ukraine

When World War I broke out, the Alter decided to move the yeshiva away from the battlefields. In 1915, he relocated with his yeshiva to Homel, which was farther from the fighting. Before leaving Novardok, he told his students that if the Germans approached, they should flee toward Ukraine. By the end of summer 1915, eighty students had reached Homel and the yeshiva was reestablished.

Notably, during his time in Homel, the Alter established a regular Kabbalah study session with the great Mekubal, Rav Shlomo Elyashiv (the Leshem). However, this arrangement lasted only two months.

In 1917, wartime circumstances forced the Alter to transfer the yeshiva from Homel to Kiev, where he founded four more yeshiva gedolos. He moved there specifically to strengthen the refugees who had gathered in the city.

While the Alter was still alive, the directors of all the yeshivos were in constant contact with him. He guided and visited them, spending nearly every Shabbos in a different town, even when he was already quite elderly. When his closest students tried to dissuade him from making such journeys, he would respond by citing the pasuk (Bereishis 12:9), “And Avraham journeyed, continuously traveling,” on which the Malbim comments, “He went to sanctify Hashem’s Name.”

One year, the Alter spent Rosh Hashanah in Homel, Shabbos Shuvah in Kiev, and Yom Kippur in Kharkov—cities that are very distant from one another.

His Final Days

During Sukkos 1919, the Russians made pogroms in Kiev, killing hundreds of Jews. Many Jews sought shelter in the Alter’s home, believing they would be spared in his merit. On Simchas Torah, the situation worsened, but the Alter instructed his students to conduct hakafos as usual. The rioters fired at the windows of his house. Everyone dropped to the floor—except the Alter, who remained standing at the head of the table, kiddush cup in hand.

After Sukkos, a typhus epidemic broke out in Kiev. The sanitary conditions in the city were dreadful, and thousands of residents died. The Alter’s home soon filled with invalids to whom he personally attended. When his closest students tried to help, “Rav Yosef Yozel was found cleaning the yeshiva toilets.”

In Kislev, he contracted the disease himself and never recovered. He passed away on the 17th of Kislev, 5680 (December 9, 1919).

Jews of Kiev and its suburbs streamed to his funeral. The last to eulogize him was his talmid, Rav Dovid Budnik. Forty-three years later, his students transferred his aron to Eretz Yisroel, and in the summer of 1963, he was reinterred in Har HaMenuchos in Yerushalayim.

The 17th of Kislev remains an important commemorative date among Novardokers, who gather together on that day to strengthen each other.

The Hebrew writer David Zaritsky later wrote a book about the Alter’s life entitled “Gesher Tzar” (A Narrow Bridge).

The Bolshevik Era and Flight to Poland

When the Bolshevik dictatorship took over Russia, the Alter’s talmidim at first chose to fight head-on against Communist ideology. But the Alter recognized the criminal nature of the regime: every dissident was shot. So he ordered his followers to cross the border into Poland. The border, however, was sealed shut. Many talmidim were shot in their attempts; others were sent to Siberian prison camps. But six hundred made it across.

A Novardok Yeshiva was established in Bialystok, and under the leadership of the Alter’s son-in-law, Rav Avraham Yoffen, it soon became the center of the movement.

Novardok in Siberia

One Novardok group was shipped en masse to the same Siberian prison camp. While individuals would become lost in the vast prison system, as a group they learned together (by heart), davened together, and came to one another’s aid spiritually and physically. Starvation rations did not seem to bother them, for even in the best of Novardok times, there was seldom much food. But cutting down giant Siberian fir trees was an unaccustomed strain.

The biggest problem was Shabbos. An individual might manage to avoid work once a week, but thirty men could not all claim sick every Shabbos.

The Novardokers bribed other prisoners to cut down trees for them on Shabbos. But the Saturday total was still short of the daily yield. They needed the foreman’s complicity too—but what kind of bribe? Money was worthless in the camp. So they gave away their own bread to the foreman and other prisoners, subsisting on Shabbos on the ballanda handed out for dinner—a watery soup with a single tired potato swimming in it.

Thirty men could not stand around idle, so they would carry the cut wood to a measuring station. Carrying on Shabbos? They solved this by handing the wood to one another within very short distances—less than daled amos—with the last one dropping it k’l’achar yad, in a manner not proscribed by halacha.

They escaped detection until one Shabbos morning when the Commandant—known as a trigger-happy sadist—appeared. Watching their system, he could not believe his eyes. Face flushed, he ordered an immediate assembly of all prisoners.

He screamed: “Look at these capitalists from fascist Poland! Now that they have to work themselves, they are lazy! They undermine the discipline of the camp and sabotage the war effort. I would shoot them one by one if I did not have to leave now. But when I return, I’ll take care of them!”

Someone explained that their “slow-down” was a regular Shabbos practice because of their religion. To mention religion to a Bolshevik is like waving a red cloth at a fighting bull. The Commandant screamed vulgarities against Heaven: “Lucky for you that I have to leave now. We’ll see next Shabbos if G-d will save you from my bullets.”

A Matter of Belief and Death

Until now it had only been a matter of Shabbos desecration, and preserving one’s life takes precedence. But the Commandant’s outburst shifted the problem into another category. Now it was a matter of a deliberate challenge to their belief—ma’avir al hadas—for which one is obligated to give his life.

The entire week they were called either geroye (heroes) or duraky (idiots). They were constantly asked if they truly believed that G-d would save them.

If there were ever a case of bitachon without hishtadlus, this was it. In the camp, there was no tree to hold on to. It was either work on Shabbos or be shot.

Help came from an undreamed-of source—from London and Moscow. Under pressure from Roosevelt and Churchill, Stalin and the Polish government-in-exile agreed to make peace. Moscow ordered all prison camps to relax pressure on Polish nationals. After a visit by Polish Prime Minister Gen. Władysław Sikorski, total amnesty was granted to all Polish citizens. All the Novardokers were released unharmed.

Their unqualified bitachon had paid off.

From the Cemetery to the Death Camps

The Novardok discipline steeled many of its students for the most harrowing conditions in World War II.

An elite group of Mevakshei Hashem in Novardok was known to go to extremes in negating worldly values. They studied Mussar in the cemetery, engraving in their hearts: “זה סוף כל האדם—this is the end of all men.” One famous member—Reb Gershon—was highly unusual; he would seek an open grave in which to lie and repeat to himself: “אין אדם מת וחצי תאוותו בידו—no person dies achieving even half of his desires.”

Several years later, confined in the Vilna Ghetto, Reb Gershon gathered a large number of yeshiva students to study Torah. When the group was shipped to a camp in Estonia, then to Stutthof, and finally to Buchenwald, Reb Gershon never stopped encouraging them in emunah and bitachon.

In Buchenwald, he suspected that the Germans were burying some people who were exhausted but not actually dead. His cemetery experiences prepared him for his rescue mission. Risking his own life, he would crawl into the room where bodies were stored overnight before burial. In total darkness, he would feel the bodies for signs of life. Many times he found warmth in a body, awakened the man, and helped him back to his barracks.

In one case, a body seemed totally dead, but passing his hand over the face, he felt a twitch in the upper lip. He snatched the body and carried it to his own barracks. He and his followers massaged the man until he came to. The man had to stay hidden—officially he was dead, he didn’t belong in that barracks, and he would receive no ration. Reb Gershon and his group had to hide him from the Germans and share their miserable hunger rations. He stayed with them until liberation, when he was reunited with his wife.

The Inspection

Before entering the camp at Stutthof, the Nazis ordered all prisoners to undress completely and march in, holding their hands above their heads with mouths open. The SS was searching for hidden gold and gems.

Reb Gershon always carried a small pack containing a Torah scroll, his tallis and tefillin, plus a pair of hair clippers—beards were forbidden in the camp, and he would not shave with a razor. Fellow prisoners advised him to get rid of his paraphernalia. “How will you smuggle in all this when you are stark naked?” they asked.

But he declared, “Without my tallis and tefillin I cannot live.”

He was forced to bury the Torah. He then marched through the SS checkpoint with his hands raised as ordered—but also carrying the tallis and tefillin in one hand and the clippers in the other. The SS man looked into Reb Gershon’s open mouth but failed to look higher. To everyone’s shock, he passed. All the years in camp, he subsisted on crumbs, for he refused to eat treif.

With him were thirty youngsters whom he trained in Torah and Mussar. One day the Nazis announced that all youngsters under 17 were “too young” to work and should report to a special barracks until they came of age. Reb Gershon was familiar with German “mercy” and ordered his talmidim not to report. Those who did were shot the very next day, while those who clung to Reb Gershon came out alive.

He made a neder that should he come out alive, he would dedicate his life to harbotzas Torah. He lived up to his neder. Emerging alive with his youngsters, he used them as the nucleus of a Novardok-type yeshiva in France. He aimed to reach our brethren of the Maghreb who had been so neglected, and as a result there is today a Torah network in France guided by Reb Gershon. In Novardok circles he is referred to as Reb Gershon Kovler, while he is generally known as Rabbi Gershon Liebman (1905–1997).

The Successors

The Alter had four sons-in-law:

Rav Avraham Yoffen, the Alter’s main successor, who headed the Novardok Yeshiva in Bialystok and later established Beis Yosef Yeshivos in New York and Eretz Yisroel.

Rav Yisroel Yaakov Lubchansky, who was the mashgiach of Yeshivas Ohel Torah in Baranovitch under Rav Elchonon Wasserman. He was killed by the Nazis together with the Jewish community of Baranovitch.

Rav Refoel Alter Shmuelevitz, Rav of Stuchin. He was a renowned scholar who followed the derech hapilpul but was not a follower of the Alter’s way of Mussar. He eventually left Novardok to head the yeshiva in Shchuchyn. His son was the legendary Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz, Rosh Yeshiva of Mir.

Rav Reuven Silver (Shlivansky).

The Alter also had a son, Rav Yitzchak Horowitz (Slobodka 1885–New York 1953).

Among the Alter’s many prominent talmidim were: Rav Dovid Budnik; Rav Dovid Bliacher, who headed Beis Yosef in Mezritch and founded the Beis Yosef network throughout Poland; Rav Shabsai Nachumowitz, Rosh Yeshiva in Siedlce and Haifa; Rav Hillel Vitkind, founder of Beis Yosef in Tel Aviv; Rav Chaim Zaichik; Rav Yehoshua Lev, Rosh Yeshiva in Lubor; Rav Yerucham Eliyahu Botschko, Rosh Yeshivas Etz Chaim in Montreux; Rav Yaakov Yisroel Kanievsky (the Steipler), who taught in Beis Yosef in Pinsk and later headed Beis Yosef in Bnei Brak; Rav Shlomo Bloch, a leader of the Mussar movement and also a talmid of the Chofetz Chaim; and Rav Shmuel Weintraub, Rosh Yeshiva of Beis Yosef in Pinsk.

After the Holocaust

With the exception of Gateshead Talmudical College—officially called Yeshivas Beis Yosef of Gateshead—all the Novardok yeshivos in Europe were wiped out during the Holocaust.

Rav Yoffen survived and came to the United States, where he established the Novardok Yeshiva. Two branches were founded in Yerushalayim—one under Rav Ben Zion Bruk and another under Rav Shmuel and Rav Eitan Jofen. Additional branches were started in New York by various children and grandchildren of Rav Avraham Yoffen, including Rav Yechiel Perr of Far Rockaway ZTL (Yeshiva of Far Rockaway) and now led by his son Rav Moshe Perr shlita, a brilliant talmid Chochom, Rav Moshe Faskowitz of Queens (Yeshiva Madregas HaAdam), and Rav Mordechai Yoffen and Rav Yisroel Zvi Nekritz (Yeshivas Beis Yosef of Brooklyn), along with Rav Yaakov Drilman, a lifelong friend and talmid of Rav Yitzchak Hutner.  

An additional network of Novardok yeshivos was founded after the Holocaust in France by Rabbi Gershon Liebman.

There is also the Lakewood branch of Novardok under Rabbi Yanky Nekritz shlita – Yeshiva Bais Yosef of Lakewood.  Also, the Flatbush branch under Rabbi Mordechai Yoffen moved up to Monsey under his son, Rabbi Moshe Joffen shlita.

The author can be reached at [email protected]