הרב שמחה זיסל זיו

Rav Simcha Zissel Ziv Broida (5584/1824–8 Av 5658/1898), known to all generations since as the Alter of Kelm, was the foremost talmid of Rav Yisrael Salanter and one of the fathers of the mussar movement. Born in Kelm to the distinguished Broida family — his mother a descendant of the Chacham Tzvi — he traveled after his marriage to Kovno to learn under Rav Yisrael, and would tell that he came intending to oppose the study of mussar, heard a single shmuess, and remained bound to his rebbe for life. He later took his mother’s family name, Ziv, when government harassment forced the change.

Around 5625/1865 he founded the Talmud Torah of Kelm, the institution that gave the mussar movement its most exacting school. When informers brought the authorities upon it he re-established it in Grobin, and after illness forced its closing in 1886 he returned to Kelm, where the Talmud Torah continued and talmidei chachamim streamed to him. He himself learned twelve hours in unbroken succession each day, and it is told that he slept two and a half hours in a night, divided into portions.

The derech of Kelm is his signature: absolute order, self-discipline, and the clearing of the mind — he saw in a single galosh out of line the root of the soul’s disorders, and dedicated shmuessen to such things; a coin left on a windowsill in the beit hamedrash of Kelm lay untouched for sixty years. With it he taught gadlut ha’adam, the greatness of man — the teaching his talmid Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel carried to Slabodka. His letters to the Devek Tov, the chaburah of his closest talmidim, became the sefer Chochmah U’Mussar, edited by his talmid Rav Yeruchom Levovitz, the Mochiach of Mir. His talmidim — among them Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, Rav Aharon Bakst, Rav Reuven Dov Dessler and his son Rav Nochum Zev Ziv — carried Kelm into every corner of the yeshiva world. He was niftar in Kelm on the morning of erev Tisha B’Av 5658 (1898).