Reuven Dov Dessler

Rabbinic leader

Reuven Dov Dessler (1863–1935) was a rabbinic leader of the Musar movement and the director of the Kelm Talmud Torah from 1918 until 1931.

He was born in 1863 in the city of Liepāja (Libau) in Courland, Latvia. His parents were strong supporters of the Musar movement and especially of the efforts of Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv, who directed a yeshiva known as the Kelm Talmud Torah. In 1874, at the age of eleven, Reuven Dov became a student at the Talmud Torah, and he remained a student there as a student of Ziv for many years.^[1]

While continuing to study at the Talmud Torah, Reuven Dov also took a position in the timber industry. In 1891, he married Hene Freidel Grodznsky, the daughter of Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Grodzensky and granddaughter of Rabbi Yisroel Lipkin Salanter, the father of the Musar movement. They had a son, Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler. Hene Freidel died in 1895. Reuven Dov later remarried to Frume Rochel Rabinovitch, the daughter of Rabbi Ya'akov Rabinovitch of Telsiai. Frume Rochel died in a terrible domestic accident in December, 1922.^[2]

In 1918, Reuven Dov became the director of the Kelm Talmud Torah, a position he held until 1931.

In 1931, he moved to London, where his son Eliyahu Eliezer was living. Reuven Dov died in 1935.

References

^ Dov Katz, Tenu'at Hamussar, vol.5
^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-07-24. Retrieved 2010-08-29.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)

Musar movement

People

Prewar leaders	Yisroel Salanter Simcha Zissel Ziv Yitzchak Blazer Nosson Tzvi Finkel Naftali Amsterdam Yosef Yozel Horwitz Yeruchom Levovitz Reuven Dov Dessler Eliezer Gordon Moshe Rosenstain Naftoli Trop
Postwar leaders	Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler Gershon Liebman Yechezkel Levenstein Chaim Leib Shmuelevitz Nosson Meir Wachtfogel Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg Shlomo Wolbe
Contemporary thinkers	Yechiel Perr Ira F. Stone Geoffrey Claussen Alan Morinis David Jaffe Hillel Goldberg