The Vilna Gaon: a rationalist and a mystic

The Gaon of Vilna and His Messianic Vision by Arie Morgenstern, translated by Naftali Greenwood. Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing House, 2012, Pp. xiii + 446; plates. Cloth, $29.95. I would give this book 4 stars!

-First in a series —

By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

CHULA VISTA, California –The Vilna Gaon’s life is the stuff that legends are made up of.  His real name was Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman Kremer, and he lived from 1720 to 1797.  “Gaon” means “genius.”   As a young precocious six-year-old child, the rabbis were astounded by the learned discourse he gave at a large Vilna synagogue. At age eight or nine, he was an expert in the entire Talmud and Kabbalah. Before he reached his Bar Mitzvah, he confided with his student, Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin how he almost made a Golem, but “heavenly forces would not allow him to complete his task” (p. 290, 304).

By now, I think I have your attention.

The Vilna Gaon slept only two hours a night; his reputation as a Torah luminary was such that he was believed to be the greatest Talmudic scholar since the redaction of the Talmud. As a man who valued the power of the moment, he carefully shepherded his use of time and had little patience with fools or Hasidim.

According to the Dubna of Maggid, this was one of the Gaon’s fatal flaws: he had very little to do with the politics of being involved with the people. Yes, you could say that he was an elitist.  Yet, it would be a mistake to think that the Gaon was a recluse. In many cases, Morgenstern notes, the Gaon was involved in answering several practical Halachic questions that needed resolving. He established a free-loan society for the poor; he always went out of his way to help the poor and indigent of his community  (p. 292). The Vilna Gaon personified the highest qualities of mentchlikeit, piety, and Torah scholarship.

For all of his brilliance, the Gaon remained a mystery even to his own family. Sadly, he did not even read his children’s letters and had little to do with their lives. Even his grandchildren lamented how he never inquired about their welfare like most grandparents (p. 300).

The Gaon did not long for the pleasures of this world.

Modern Jews probably don’t appreciate why people would engross themselves in messianic speculations—despite the Talmudic warnings against such hermeneutical excesses. Didn’t the Talmud warn us, “Three things come when one least expects it: the Messiah, a found article and a scorpion” (BT Sanhedrin 97a)?

Much of Morgenstern’s book (two-thirds!) attempts to explain why these messianic yearnings were so endemic of the 18th century.   The Gaon witnessed the Messianic frenzy that gripped the collective imagination of Jews especially after the charlatan supreme—Shabbtai Tzvi–left his followers feeling totally disillusioned after he converted to Islam. I would add that the Cossack rebellion of Bogdan Chmielnicki, leader of the Cossack peasant uprising against the Polish rule in the Ukraine, led to what historians describe as the first modern pogrom. Chmielnicki butchered over 100,000 Jews in one of the worse chapters of Jewish history. The Jews felt demoralized and wanted the Messiah very badly. Although Karl Marx regarded religion as an opiate of the masses, one could say the 18th century mystics fed their disciples on the hope that the Messiah would finally arrive. These yearnings often reassert themselves whenever people’s lives are drastically affected by events that they cannot control.

In my personal opinion, Jewish mysticism has done a grave disservice to Judaism by popularizing the belief in a personal Messiah. Kabbalists throughout the medieval period ignored the prudent Talmudic advice and hawked “The Messiah is coming!” The 18th century Jewish world allowed itself to be seduced by the Lurianic teachings of “ketzim” (“end times”), which speculated actual dates when the Messiah might come.[1] Even though the Jewish world saw Shabbtai Tzvi exposed for the fraud he was, they continued to hope and believe.

The Vilna Gaon also got caught up in this expectation and even believed that he had a pivotal role in revealing the esoteric secrets of the Torah along with writing a brand new Shulchan Aruch that would effectively put an end to all the disagreements found in Jewish Law. Like Maimonides, he wanted to write Code of Jewish Law that would be uniform, consistent, and bereft of disagreements. Unlike Maimonides, he was prepared to buttress his final decision with a plethora of citations proving why his decisions were final. In addition, the Gaon excoriated Maimonides for his penchant for the “accursed” study of Greek philosophy (p. 324). The Gaon understood his role as a teacher of Judaism and felt he had an obligation to reveal the Torah’s secrets and pave the way for the Messiah.

Certainly, if anyone was capable of composing such a work, the Vilna Gaon was up to the task. The author found some fascinating letters, the Gaon had planned to make a journey to Israel. While he was in Amsterdam, he changed his mind and never made that trip and subsequently never composed the new Shulchan Aruch that would bring an end to all Halachic controversy. It is intriguing to think that the Vilna Gaon finally exorcised the messianic madness that had blinded the Kabbalists and their hapless followers.

Like a dawn separating the previous day and the day that follows, the Vilna Gaon came to a radically new understanding of the messianic world—one which would combine realism and proactive behavior. Morgenstern writes:

  • Around September 1778, the Gaon apparently retraced his steps with an acute sense of failure, having been impeded by the supreme authority. The experienced marked a turning point in his way of life. His orientation from then on was different from everything that had preceded it. Until then, he Gaon of Vilna had doggedly believed in a sequential path to the hastening of the redemption: revealing the secrets of the Torah, concluding the sorting process, and writing a Halakha as systemic and clear as when given at Sinai. . . After he returned to Vilna, the Gaon began to change his ways taking action to train a group of people who would spearhead the march to redemption. . . The Gaon came to the realization that the redemption should be hastened by human actions that share the motive of “redemption by natural means.” No longer would he prescribe something one man could perform, a mystical action, to a nonrecurrent  course of behavior. Instead he favored a lengthy process in which several human activities would be combined . . . (pp. 387-388).

So, what exactly did the Gaon do? He encouraged his followers to settle in the Land of Israel and make the country’s wastelands blossom, while fulfilling the religious traditions of our people. He thus yoked physical and spiritual redemption in a manner that Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook would later articulate one century later. Unlike the numerous Kabbalists of his time who believed in a supernatural redemption that would overwrite the laws of nature, the Gaon believed that the Redemption (Ge’ulah) must begin through natural means, just like the Prophet Isaiah envisioned regarding King Cyrus of Persia:

Who says to the deep,

“Be dry—I will dry up your rivers”;

Who says of Cyrus, “He is my shepherd,

And he shall carry out all my purpose”;

And who says of Jerusalem, “It shall be rebuilt,”

And of the temple, “Your foundation shall be laid.”

Isaiah 44:24-28

For all of his love of Talmud, the Gaon proved to be Judaism’s greatest mystic of the 18th century. He believed that the process of redemption is not a one-time event, but a long painstaking process.The Vilna Gaon sent 500 families to settle throughout Israel—and arguably proved to be one of the great pre-Hertzl Zionists of his era!! With much of the lore concerning the “Ten Lost Tribes,” the Vilna Gaon believed that the ingathering of the Jewish people had now begun since the Jews were living in the “footsteps of the Messiah.”

The Vilna Gaon’s followers made aliyah in 1808 and they created an important turning point in the resurrection of Modern Israel. Israel ceased existing as a liturgical dream that inspired Jewish prayer. Now, our ancestors’ dreams became a stark reality. The olim’s accomplishments provided the subsequent Zionist movement a foundation upon which to build. The Vilna Gaon’s vision inspired men like Hertzl and others to create the Judaism’s greatest miracle of history—the rebirth of Israel.



[1] See Likutei Torah of the Ari, Parshat Miketz.  I can remember when I was a rabbinical student how many of us studied these dates in fine detail.