Search Results

The Vilna Ga’on, an extraordinary Talmudic scholar, inspired in his disciples a sense that he was a supernatural phenomenon, with a messianic mission to redeem the Jewish nation by disseminating the true knowledge of Torah and by settling the Land of Israel. Although he himself never succeeded in immigrating to the Land, many of his disciples did so. They had a profound sense that the End of Days was approaching, and they developed the doctrine that redemption was not contingent on repentance but would come at its appointed time no matter what; repentance bore only on how it was to come about and on whether it might be accelerated. They likewise regarded as no longer applicable the prohibition in the “Three Oaths” against efforts on Israel’s part to hasten the End (“ascending the wall”). Rejecting the traditional emphasis on passivity, they held that the awakening above (i.e., God’s redemptive actions) could be triggered by the awakening from below (human actions directed toward hastening redemption), such as settling the Land of Israel and rebuilding it in order to “raise the Shekhinah from its ashes”.

Between 1815 and 1848, the forces of liberalism and nationalism contended with those of reaction orchestrated by the Austrian chancellor Metternich. Governments generally expected universities to enforce political and religious orthodoxy. University professors and students, mostly drawn from the growing middle class, had a central part in these conflicts. In Germany, the Burschenschaft student movement voiced the demand for German national unity, but was severely repressed after 1819. In France and Italy, professors and students were often involved in political movements, sometimes violent, in the 1820s and during the 1830 revolutions. A particularly dramatic episode was the Polish rising against Russian rule in 1830, which led to the suppression of Vilna University and the diffusion of Polish intellectual exiles. During the 1848 revolutions, students were active on the liberal side in Germany, at Vienna, and in France.

After American rejection of the Covenant, which London could not influence, the League was overshadowed by the Allied Supreme Council which tackled the main post‐war issues. The British supported the Canadian attempt to delete article 10 (the territorial guarantee) but this was not seen as an important issue. Nor was the elaboration of procedures for sanctions under article 16 (the guarantee of peace) through the nineteen resolutions of 1921. Lord Curzon succeeded Balfour as Foreign Secretary. Rejecting balance of power politics, he valued the League as embodying moral principles in the conduct of international affairs. The League was involved in the resolution of several crises including Armenia (1920), North Persia (1920), Vilna (1920–3), Upper Silesia (1921), and Albania (1921). Its record was mixed. Meanwhile, Cecil, aiming to replace Lloyd George with a high‐minded coalition under Grey, turned the League of Nations Union into a significant force in British politics.

This chapter discusses the strategies of resistance beyond Minsk. It focuses on the Kovno ghetto and its efforts to send Jews to the forest. The story of the Kovno ghetto forms a useful point of comparison with the Minsk ghetto underground. In contrast to the approximately ten thousand Jews who reached partisan units from the Minsk ghetto, only about three hundred Jews reached the partisan units from the Kovno ghetto. These differences were caused by geographical and logistical differences between the two ghettos. Like Minsk, the Kovno ghetto was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, however the sentries of the Kovno ghetto were stationed at intervals along it. Kovno was not like Minsk, which was within a day's walk of the partisan forest. It was not possible for the residents of the Kovno ghetto to leave on their own, walk to the forest and search for partisan groups to join. The most important difference between the Minsk and Kovno ghetto was that the Minsk ghetto was part of a united underground movement while the Kovno ghetto did not have external allies. Due to the weakness and the isolation of underground forces outside the ghetto, Kovno was only able to send limited numbers of Jews to the forest. This Kovno story highlights the significance of external allies, such as links to a strong underground organization, and a dense network of ties between Jews in the ghetto and non-Jews outside it. In addition to discussing the story of the Kovno ghetto, the chapter also tackles the ghetto revolt that dominated the ghettos of Vilna, Warsaw, and Bialystock.

This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about Rabbi Eliyahu, the son of Shlomo Zalman, known as the Gaon of Vilna. This book provides descriptions of the Gaon written by his sons and several of his disciples and examines the works of Gaon in relation to the Haskalah, Hasidism, and Mitnagdim. It also discusses Talmudic scholarship and the rabbinate in Lithuanian Jewry during the nineteenth century and explains the thought and practice of the Vilna Gaon.

This chapter describes the unusual distinction of the Gaon of Vilna's achievements as a Torah scholar, a distinction that made him a symbol and model of greatness in Torah scholarship in the eyes of his disciples and in the eyes of many others. It attempts to reconstruct the figure of the Gaon as it was conceived and interpreted by those few who saw his face based on the introductions written by the Gaon's two sons and a few of his students to his posthumously published works. The analysis reveals that in various ways the Gaon's disciples and sons expressed their conviction that before them was a person of superhuman dimensions and that the sum of his writings represented merely a drop of the sea of his wisdom.

This chapter deals with the myth of the Vilna Gaon as a maskil among both proponents and opponents of Haskalah. It traces this myth as reflected in the historiography of the Haskalah movement and shows that the matter of the Gaon and Haskalah is an instructive example of the continuity between Haskalah literature of the nineteenth century and Jewish historiography of the end of that century and the first half of the next. It discusses the image of the Vilna Gaon as a maskil as a weapon in the hands of Orthodox Judaism and evaluates the influence of the Vilna Gaon on the growth of the Haskalah movement in Lithuania.

This chapter discusses various aspects of the controversy between the Hasidism and the Mitnagdim and evaluates the role of Vilna Gaon in the struggle against Hasidism. The findings contradict the view that the struggle against Hasidism began as an initiative of the oligarchy, and that the Gaon merely served as a figurehead that the establishment was pleased to use. The result reveals that the basic motives underlying the struggle against Hasidism were spiritual and religious, and not political and social.

This chapter examines how the persecuted Hasidim regard their persecutor and how did the Hasidic leaders explain to themselves and to their flocks the fact that their chief opponent, Vilna Gaon, was the greatest scholar of their generation. It analyzes the letters written by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyady. The findings reveal that Zalman's response to the role played by the Vilna Gaon in the struggle against Hasidism was dual. While he acknowledged the Gaon's eminence as the greatest scholar of his day, he also challenged his authority to determine that Hasidism was a heresy.

This chapter discusses the controversy between Mitnagdim and Hasidim focusing on Rabbi H. Hayyim of Volozhin's response to Hasidism. Hayyim waged the struggle against Hasidism in a style entirely different from that initiated and led by his teacher and master, Vilna Gaon. It explains that while Vilna Gaon waged an unrelenting war to eliminate the deviant sect, Hayyim chose to struggle against Hasidism on the plane of ideas and education. It also discusses Hayyim's realization that Hasidim were not heretics and their motives were pure and his establishment of the Volozhin yeshiva.

This chapter examines the relations between Torah scholarship and the institution of the rabbinate in nineteenth-century Lithuania. It discusses the apparent contradiction between the ideal of Torah lishma and the rabbinate and analyzes the roles played by the heritage of the Vilna Gaon and that of Rabbi Hayyim in shaping the ideal of Torah study. This analysis is based on the biographies of rabbis written by their descendants or their admiring students, and the personal letters of traditional scholars.

This chapter discusses Vilna Gaon's outlook and practice regarding the relationship between the value of Torah study and that of yira. It describes the character and purpose of the Gaon's ascetic withdrawal and attempts to clarify his conception of the reciprocal relations and correct equilibrium between the value of yira and that of Torah study. It highlights the influence of the Gaon in the struggle against Hasidism and the flourishing of the world of Torah in Lithuania.

This chapter addresses the question: What is Talmud? According to Gaon, the Talmud originated from a project of emending the printed Talmudic texts based on considerations of his own and others' intellectual experience of Talmudic learning. In the 19th century, the Vilna Gaon's view on the Talmud won another continuation. The book of the Talmud therefore became a source for Jewish culture. However, the neo-Kantian, cultural-historical, universalistic view of the Talmud as a book had not only a philosophical manifestation, but a philological one as well. This time the Talmud emerged as a cultural-historical object, belonging only and exclusively to its authentic historical period which was during late antiquity.

Situated in the second half of the nineteenth century, Memoirs tells the story of the dissolution of tradition in Russian Jewish society through the experience of one family. This chapter depicts Jewish society in more traditional Vilna, the effects on Wengeroff’s husband, and the family’s continuing economic troubles.