Alter of Navardhok

Rabbi Yosef Yozel Horowitz, remembered as the Alter of Novardok, was born in 1847 in Plungian (Plungė), Lithuania, and first made his living as a merchant. An encounter with Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, then serving in Memel, drew him toward the Mussar approach to ethical self-development, and he went on to study with Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv, the Alter of Kelm, and Rabbi Yitzchak Blazer. He established a yeshiva in Navahrudak (Novardok) and, from it, an extensive network of affiliated yeshivas across towns such as Minsk, Warsaw, and Berdichev. His teaching centered on bitachon, trust in Divine providence, an emphasis preserved in his collected discourses, Madregas Ha-Adam. During the First World War he moved the yeshiva eastward, reaching Kiev, where he died in 1919 during a typhoid epidemic.