Rabbi Avigdor Miller zt"l
Rabbi Avigdor Miller zt"l (1908–2001) was one of the most influential American voices in Torah hashkafa of the twentieth century. A rav in Flatbush, Brooklyn, he became beloved far beyond his own kehillah for lectures that made deep ideas of emunah vivid, plain-spoken and impossible to ignore. Generations were shaped by his insistence that a Jew's whole life should be lit up by awareness of Hashem.
He was famous above all for the theme of gratitude — for training a person to notice the endless kindnesses woven into the natural world and into an ordinary day, and to feel thankful for them. That habit of seeing and appreciating became a hallmark of his teaching, and it colors these shiurim as much as any other.
The sefer he is teaching
Mesillas Yesharim, the "Path of the Just," is the Ramchal's classic map of spiritual growth. Built as a ladder of traits — from watchfulness and zeal upward toward holiness — it lays out, step by careful step, how a person moves from mere avoidance of wrong to genuine closeness with Hashem. It has been a bedrock mussar text for Jews for nearly three centuries.
It is a natural sefer for Rabbi Miller to teach, because its concerns were his: the honest work of self-refinement and the pursuit of yiras Shamayim. Where the Ramchal charts the path, Rabbi Miller was a master at making each rung feel urgent and reachable rather than distant and theoretical.
This series
In this series, Rabbi Miller's recorded shiurim carry a listener through Mesillas Yesharim with his unmistakable voice and outlook. He does not merely explain the Ramchal's words; he presses them home, connecting each stage of growth to concrete choices and to the gratitude and clarity he spent a lifetime teaching people to cultivate.
The result is a meeting of two greatnesses — the Ramchal's structured wisdom and Rabbi Miller's power to inspire. For a listener, it offers both a plan and the motivation to actually follow it, which is exactly what a mussar sefer is meant to provide. To learn it now is to keep sitting, in a sense, at Rabbi Miller's feet.
Finding kosher Torah video for your family
FilteredTube is a kosher video service built for Jewish families — every single video is approved against one written standard before it can appear, with no open feed, no comments, and no surprises. It is a calm, safe place to look for the Torah and Jewish music you love.
If your family enjoys the Torah of Rabbi Avigdor Miller zt"l, search FilteredTube for the speakers and topics that matter most to you. With a daf yomi shelf, a weekly parsha shelf, topic shelves, audio-only listening for the car, and a kids mode with a PIN, kosher Jewish video is easy to reach — and the approved catalog keeps growing every day.
At a glance
Key takeaways
- Rabbi Avigdor Miller zt"l (1908–2001) was a Flatbush rav and one of the great American voices in Torah hashkafa.
- He was famous for the theme of gratitude — training people to notice and thank Hashem for everyday kindnesses.
- Mesillas Yesharim, the Ramchal's ladder of traits, maps the climb from watchfulness toward holiness.
- The series pairs the Ramchal's structured wisdom with Rabbi Miller's power to make each step feel urgent and reachable.
- Search FilteredTube for kosher, approved Torah video — the catalog grows every day.