הרב אליהו בן שלמה זלמן

Rav Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman (15 Nisan 5480/1720–19 Tishrei 5558/1797), the Vilna Gaon — the Gra, known in English sources as Elijah of Vilna — stood in his era as the supreme Torah authority, a figure the Chazon Ish placed in the ranks of the Rishonim; the Jews of Lita called him simply “the Gaon.” He was born in the village of Sielec near Brisk to Rav Shlomo Zalman and Treina, and named for his ancestor Rav Eliyahu Chassid. At six he said a derasha in the Great Synagogue of Vilna and, at the request of the av beit din, added a pilpul of his own; at nine he had begun learning the Zohar and the writings of the Arizal; from ten he needed no more teachers, and by twenty rabbanim were sending him their hardest halachic questions.

He married Chana, daughter of Yehuda Leib of Kaidan, who carried the household so that his every hour belonged to Torah. After travels through Poland and Germany he returned to Vilna in 5505/1745, steadily refusing any rabbanut while the kehillah, honored by his presence, granted him a small stipend. His sons relate that all his life he slept two hours a day, in four half-hour portions, never more than “sixty breaths”; his mechutan, the Chayei Adam, wrote that the entire Torah was laid out before him like a set table. He learned for the peshat and against pilpul — in his small beit midrash the Gemara was learned with Rashi, the Rif, and the Rosh, straight toward psak — ruled with striking independence, at times against the Shulchan Aruch and accepted minhag, and emended girsaot in the Yerushalmi, the Tosefta, and the Zohar out of sheer breadth of knowledge; many of his haggahot were later found to match exact manuscripts.

Nothing of his was printed in his lifetime. His sons and talmidim brought to press the Biur HaGra on the Shulchan Aruch and his haggahot across the Talmud, Shenot Eliyahu on the Mishnah, Aderet Eliyahu on the Torah, peirushim on Mishlei and other sifrei Tanach, and, in the hidden Torah, his peirushim on the Sifra deTzeniuta — which he held to be the foundation sefer of Kabbalah — on Tikkunei Zohar and on Sefer Yetzirah. He valued the sciences as handmaidens to Torah learning, writing Ayil Meshulash on mathematics, geometry, and astronomy, while condemning philosophy outright. When the new chassidic movement spread, he led the opposition, signing the Vilna cherem of 5532/1772 and again in 5541/1781, and declining to meet Rav Shneur Zalman of Liadi.

He set out himself for Eretz Yisrael, writing his family from Koenigsberg the letter later printed as Alim LeTerufah, but turned back, saying he had no permission from Heaven. From 5528/1767 a beit midrash stood beside his home where select talmidei chachamim brought him their questions; from it came Rav Chaim of Volozhin, who built the Volozhin yeshiva on his rebbi’s derech, and Rav Menachem Mendel of Shklov, who headed the aliyah of the Gaon’s talmidim from 5568/1808 — first to Tzfat, and from 5576/1816 to Yerushalayim, where they rebuilt the Ashkenazi kehillah and where minhag HaGra is followed to this day. He was niftar in Vilna on 19 Tishrei 5558/1797, during Sukkot.