אברהם רגולר

Rav Avraham of Ragola (5482/1722–4 Nisan 5564/1804), known as Avraham Ragoler, was the brother of the Vilna Gaon — a mekubal and maggid whose small sefer became one of the most beloved mussar works in the Jewish library. Born to Rav Shlomo Zalman and Traina two years after his brother Eliyahu, he served from his youth as maggid of Shklov, the city of lomdim filled with his brother’s talmidim, and later of Ragola in Zamut, whose name he carries. His life was Torah stripped of everything else: the Gaon himself described his brother as “a soul without a body.”

He wrote much — a kabbalistic commentary on Megillah and Esther, commentaries on the Torah, the siddur and the Haggadah — but nearly all remained in manuscript. What reached the world was enough: Maalot HaTorah, printed by his grandson in 5584/1824 and reprinted ever since — small in quantity and great in quality, gathering the words of Chazal, the midrashim and the Zohar on the greatness of Torah and its learners, set with pearls from the mouth of his brother the Gaon. He explains his purpose in the introduction: the road of teshuvah in these generations runs not through fasting and affliction, which the public can no longer carry, but through the Torah itself, which elevates and atones and gathers the exiles. He commanded his own family to finish the sefer once a month.

His descendants carried his line onward in Lita’s (Lithuania’s) rabbanut — among them Rav Eliyahu Baruch Kamai, rosh yeshiva of Mir. He was niftar on 4 Nisan 5564 in the town where his son Rav Eliyahu served as av beit din.