Nephesh HaChaim.

VOLOZHINER, CHAIM.

Partners Mann & Zimmel

Vilna & Grodno

1824

FIRST EDITION. Marginalia.

Vinograd, Vilna 183.

The keystone text of contemporary Lithuanian (‘Yeshivish’) Jewry. The principle disciple of the Vilna Gaon, R. Chaim Volozhin was the widely acknowledged leader of the Mithnagdic Movement following the establishment of his Yeshiva in 1802. His writings were highly influential within the elite, scholarly, Lithuanian Yeshiva circles. Based on complex interpretations of the Zohar and related Kabbalistic texts, the Nephesh HaChaim is the most fundamental tract to outline the weltanschauung of Lithuanian Jewry: An in-depth study of man and his purpose in this world alongside his relationship with God and Torah. It was composed in part as a response to the philosophical approach taken by R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi in his Sepher Tanya. While the Hassidic movement advocated prayer and emotional worship as partners to Torah scholarship in the service of God, R. Chaim Volozhin lays out a system wherein Torah learning reigns supreme over all other forms of service, with no other act coming even close to its level of importance. For an exposition of the author’s thought pertaining to the selfless study of Torah, see N. Lamm, Torah Lishmah (1989).