Elul 5783: Bachya Ibn Pakuda's Musar Classic

💖 In the season of introspection and returning, we have a powerful tool in Bachya Ibn Pakuda's Chovot ha-Levavot. Here's the inside story about this influential work and its mysterious author.

Chodesh tov! You can almost smell the honey cake. (I have a kid who insists on calling it honey bread, “because a bread is a cake you can eat for breakfast.” In case you needed an asmachta.) Elul for me is a mixture of clean-slated hope and introspective trepidation. The latter can sort of overwhelm the former, so I put Ishay Ribo’s Seder ha-Avodah on r…