The Novardok Yeshiva was one of the largest and most important yeshivas in pre-World War II Europe, and a force within the Mussar movement. It was the first of hundreds of a network of Musar yeshivas that were all called Novardok yeshivas.[1]
The yeshiva was established in Novogrudok, Minsk Governorate, Russian Empire in 1896,[1] together with a Kollel for married men, under the direction of Rabbi Yosef Yozel Horwitz, an alumnus of the Kovno Kollel and pupil of Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, like whom he was an advocate of the Mussar approach. He was known as the Alter fun Novardok, a Yiddish term meaning "the elder of Novardok".
Novardok established yeshivas all over the region, in major cities such as Kyiv, Kharkiv, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, Zhytomyr, Berdychiv, Tsaritsyn (now Volgograd), Saratov, Plogid, and Chernihiv.[2] Influenced by the Alter, his students also created Yeshivas in Kherson, Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Kamieniec-Podolski, Berdichev, Nikolaev, Bălţi, Odessa, Piotrków Trybunalski[3] and other places.[1]