475) Messianic Mitnagdim

 

Autograph manuscript by the Vilna Gaon published in 1963 under the title Likutei haGra.

Introduction

This article – based extensively on the research by Dr Arie Morgenstern[1] − examines the little-known messianic fervour apparent in the teachings and activities of the students of the Vilna Gaon during the early nineteenth century. 

According to Morgenstern, the Vilna Gaon sent some of his most important students, known the Perushim (Separatists), on Aliya to the Land of Israel from around 1808. Their purpose was to re-establish and settle the Land as a final preparation for the arrival of the Messiah. Morgenstern makes extensive use of recently discovered documents to support this position. 

465) Did R. Chaim of Volozhin intentionally alter the image of the Vilna Gaon?

 

A 1704 manuscript of an early Hebrew translation of Euclid’s Elements. Later, in 1780, the first printed Hebrew edition of Euclid's Elements, was published in Amsterdam, translated into Hebrew by R. Baruch Schick of Shklov, on the instruction of the Vilna Gaon. 

Abstract

Based on a comparison between the various representations of the Vilna Gaon’s worldview by his different students, it seems that his main student, R. Chaim of Volozhin, meticulously selected, if not shaped, only certain aspects of his teacher’s ideology to present to future generations. We shall examine how R. Chaim of Volozhin crafted an image of the Vilna Gaon as: 

1) a religious scholar not interested in the secular scholarship; 

2a) a theoretical or theosophical master of mysticism with no interest in theurgical or practical Kabbalah;

2b) a master practical Kabbalist (the previous characterisation of the Vilna Gaon as a 'theoretical Kabbalist' was later changed to present him as 'practical Kabbalist'), and

3) a spiritual innovator who intended to present an ‘authorised’ version of mysticism, in lieu of Chassidism, to the Lithuanian Mitnagdim. 

These representations are then compared to how other students and family members charactersied and witnessed the Vilna Gaon, and to what the Gaon himself had expressed on these matters.