R. Avraham Karleitz, known as the Hazon Ish (1878-1953) was one of the most influential rabbinic figures in the twentieth century. Born in Kosava, then in Russia and studying in yeshivot in Vilna, Karleitz immigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1933, settling in the small hamlet of Bnei Brak near Tel Aviv. Over the next twenty years he helped build Bnei Brak into one of the haredi centers of the world and remains the figurehead of the community more than half a century after his death.

Hazon Ish was known for his personal piety, his Talmudic acumen, and his legal responsum. He is less known for a small book entitled Emunah u-vitahon that he refused to publish during his life fearing it would be the cause of controversy in his community. The book is a subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle polemic against the Musar Movement that had gained traction in the haredi world mid-century and also the Brisker method of Talmud study that focuses on novella (hidush) as opposed to the more straightforward understanding on the Talmudic text.

In Emunah u-vitahon, the Hazon Ish seeks to construct the halakhic subject—the one who falls in love with the law and submits him or herself to it as an act of piety and not mere obligation. The danger of musar and the mental gymnastics of the Brisker method for Hazon Ish is that these methods of human perfection require the autonomy of the self that is always subject to the deception of the yetser ha-ra' (for Hazon Ish, the natural desire for self-interest). The only way to avoid this self-deception is through submission to a system, the law that could obligate one to act against one's self-interest. The law should not merely be followed but be loved such that the lover submits to it as an act of fidelity.

This critique of musar is also a critique of reason and the cultivation of love of the law achieved through consistent and intricate study of its details as an alternative to the natural inclination of love of the self. Hazon Ish saw that giving too much autonomy to the self that is endemic to musar's belief in the possibility of self-perfection through human agency would eventually endanger the sovereignty of the law in the lives of Jews.

This frontispiece is a copy of the first edition of Emunah u-vitahon published in 1954. It has been re-published many times and a full English translation appeared as Faith and Trusttranslated by Yaakov Goldstein in Israel in 2008.