נפתלי אמסטרדם

Rabbi Naftali Dov Amsterdam (5592/1832, Salant – 6 Adar 5676/1916, Yerushalayim) was among the first of the mussar movement in Lithuania and one of the leading talmidim of Rabbi Yisrael Salanter. From his youth he stood out in diligence and in yirah, so much so that Rabbi Yisrael gave his own son into his hands to raise. He learned under Rabbi Yisrael in his batei midrash in Vilna and in Kovno and was among his senior talmidim; his rebbi characterized three of his foremost followers by saying that Rabbi Yitzchak Blazer was the scholar, Rabbi Simchah Zissel Ziv the sage, and Rabbi Naftali the pious one.

After his marriage he refused to take rabbanut upon himself and opened a bakery in his house for a living, but his rebbi forbade him to work in it as a common laborer and he therefore sought a rabbinical position. In 1867 he was appointed rav of Helsinki, where he served eight years; in 1870 he attempted to move to the rabbanut of Novgorod, and when that failed returned to Helsinki until 1875, when he resigned and went back to Kovno. Living there in poverty, he was sent by Rabbi Yisrael to serve in St. Petersburg as a moreh tzedek alongside his companion Rabbi Yitzchak Blazer, a post he held about a year. He afterwards served in the rabbanut in the towns of Yasvain and Aleksot, and in the end left rabbanut altogether and gave himself to his own work in mussar, spreading that way in his surroundings and saying shmuessen in the mussar yeshivot.

In 1906, after his wife was niftar, he left Kovno and went up to Eretz Yisrael, settling in Yerushalayim, where he was active in spreading Torah and mussar. He was niftar there and was buried on Har HaZeitim. His son Rabbi Eliezer Levin served as rav in Nadarzyn in Poland.