As he’s toured around the country talking about his newest book, Alan Morinis likes to say he wrote a book about Shabbat that also isn’t about Shabbat, despite his book being called The Shabbat Effect.
“The part of it that is not about Shabbat is a larger frame, and that frame is the interplay of religious structure,” said Morinis, the founder of the Mussar Institute “The idea of a structured practice that is not deliberately or not exclusively a spiritual practice, but a religious practice – and the spiritual impact of that when it’s approached with a certain intentionality, and that’s what the Shabbat effect is: That by practicing a formal Shabbat, that can have an enormous impact on inner life that is lasting the other six days of the week as well.”
Living Mussar, the Twin Cities’ Mussar group, is bringing Morinis to Minnesota for events on April 29 and 30. The event is the first big speaker event Living Mussar has hosted in its current iteration. Executive Director Julie Dean said that Morinis was in Minnesota in 2015 as the Mussar program was launching…