Soul Purpose

Soul Purpose, subtitled “Your Daily Dose of Wisdom from Pirkei Avot”, is the latest text on that popular tractate to emanate from Mosaica Press. The author, Ruchi Koval, is no stranger to the printed word: this is her third title, following Soul Construction and Conversations with God.

So what does Ruchi bring to Avot? Quite a lot, it seems. Her goal is not to produce a learned tome on the subject, replete with footnotes and scholarly reference points. Rather, it is to slice and dice Avot into concise and accessible messages—rarely more than a page in length—that, taken cumulatively, are intended as an aid to personal growth and spiritual reflection. There is a message for every day of the calendar year (including 29 February), each one closing with a personal resolution along the lines of “Today I will/won’t” do A, B or C.

Ruchi’s inspiration is the commentary on Avot by Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch. The reason for this is not immediately obvious, since there is no similarity of style or repetition of content. Rather, she points to functionality. What was Rabbi Hirsch seeking to do? He was striving to seize and retain the attention of a readership consisting in the main of secularly educated and cultured Jews who may have committed little time to detailed analysis and speculation on issues of Jewish ethical philosophy. In seeking to do so, Rabbi Hirsch was constrained by considerations of space: his commentary was to be wrapped around the text of Avot in the Siddur Avodas Yisroel. With limited scope for spreading the message of the mishnah, every word had to count.

Taken individually, each day’s message bears contemporary relevance, particularly (but by no means exclusively) for the typical educated middle-class Anglo-American Jew with one foot planted firmly in the secular world and the planted perhaps a little less firmly in the world of commitment to Torah study and to the more serious aspects of Jewish lifestyle. Some mini-essays are easier than others to relate to the underlying mishnah, but this is inevitable if repetition is to be minimised.

For the reader who takes this book seriously and actually reads it at the rate of just one page a day, stopping to think about the moral underlying each mishnah (or part thereof), there can be great personal benefits to be derived. But woe to the reader who is tempted to go from day to day at a single sitting: the potential for personal improvement will be in danger of being drowned in a sea of noble aspirations.

For further details of Ruchi Koval click here.

For Ruchi Koval books on Amazon click here.

For comments and discussion of this post on Facebook, click here.