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The Mussar movement, founded by Rabbi Israel of Salant (Rabbi Israel Lipkin of Salant), emphasized personal behavior, probity, honesty, social welfare, care for others, and meticulous observance of Jewish values and Jewish laws. The Mussar movement originally was intended to be a mass movement to encompass all of Jewish Lithuania, but it did not strike root with the masses. It did, however, infiltrate the yeshivot, and most of the yeshivot by the end of the 19th century in Lithuania were called Mussar yeshivot, which devoted time and energy to the teaching, review, and exposition of these ethical ideas.
Rabbi Salant was a person of genius and of outstanding qualities, and his disciples spread this idea throughout the Jewish world. There are still vestiges of it in the Jewish world today. However, Mussar works much better in an impoverished Jewish society than in an affluent Jewish society, and because of that it is not quite as influential as it once was. It still exists in the Lithuanian-type yeshivot that exist in the world today, and the effects of Mussar certainly changed the Jewish world not just in the 19th century but in all future centuries as well.
Thank you for watching. I'm Barl Line. For more on Jewish history, go to jewishhistorydotorg.