“Man wants to achieve greatness overnight, and he wants to sleep well that night too.”– Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv, Alter of Kelm

“Most of us, myself included, let ourselves off the hook too easily in our moral lives.” – Rabbi Geoffrey Claussen

The leading musar teacher Rabbi Simhah Zissel Ziv of the late 19^th century was deeply troubled as he walked along the main road in his town of Kelm, which had been paved by the king’s prisoners sentenced to slave labor. He would  be troubled by their suffering.  “How can people walk calmly through this place,” he wondered, “when people suffered so much and invested their blood and sweat?” Today in 2016, we have labor injustices, workers mistreated and much of the cheap merchandise that we buy is produced by slave labor. But do we have any authoritative traditional Jewish voice that makes Jews sensitive to these sufferings?