Elijah ben Solomon

Lithuanian rabbi and theologian

• Born: April 23, 1720
• Birthplace: Sielec, Lithuania
• Died: October 9, 1797
• Place of death: Vilna (now Vilnius), Lithuania

Elijah ben Solomon contributed to Talmudic and rabbinic literature by solving the most complicated questions of Jewish law and by writing commentaries and annotations to biblical, Talmudic, and Kabbalistic texts.

Early Life

Elijah ben Solomon was born on the first day of Passover, 1720, to Treina Zalman and Rabbi Solomon Zalman. Rabbi Solomon named his son Elijah in memory of his grandfather. Early in his childhood, Elijah manifested an intellect of great potential. At the age of six, Elijah was able to study the Bible and the Talmud by himself. At six and a half, he delivered a lengthy discourse on Jewish law in the great synagogue in Vilna. When the boy was seven, Rabbi Abraham Katzenellenbogen of Brest Litovsk took him to study under Rabbi Moses Margalioth. Sometimes Elijah’s comprehension was so swift that it was impossible for others to follow his thought. While most Jewish boys of his age were still laboring through the Torah, Elijah could navigate through the vast sea of the Talmud and the Kabbala.

Elijah also studied secular subjects—algebra, astronomy, geometry, geography, history, anatomy, and philosophy—to understand certain Talmudic laws and discussions. His main reason for studying astronomy, for example, was to comprehend the regulations of the Jewish calendar.

At age eighteen, Elijah married Hannah, the daughter of a rabbi. There is no doubt that much of Elijah’s success was attributable to his happy marriage with Hannah. She was often the only person who had access to the secret retreats Elijah selected for his meditations. She brought him food and informed him about the happenings in the community. Elijah had full confidence in his wife, and she, an exceptionally pious and valorous woman, gave him her full empathy.

At the age of twenty, Elijah decided to leave his wife and home in Vilna and wander throughout Europe. He had concluded that his store of knowledge was inadequate because of his seclusion. He wanted to gain a fuller understanding of Judaism by witnessing Jewish life in its various aspects, seeing the customs and traditions of diverse peoples. For eight years, he traveled, impoverished, through the kingdoms of Europe. For a while, he served as a tutor to Jewish children in an isolated village. There are interesting but unverified stories about Elijah helping perplexed scholars to solve complicated problems. In one tale, a professor accosted him in Berlin and requested his help in solving an abstruse astronomical problem. Elijah solved the professor’s problem with a sketch on a scrap of paper.

Elijah returned to Vilna as a recognized authority in Jewish law. Rabbis from all over Europe turned to him with their rabbinic legal difficulties. Again and again Jews in Vilna urged him to become the rabbi of Vilna, but Elijah refused. He would not even accept membership in the rabbinical board, but his opinion was sought on all important questions. Only on rare occasions would he publicly assert his great, though unofficial, authority. He preferred his status as a layperson.

Life’s Work

Elijah ben Solomon settled in Vilna, where he would live for the remainder of his life. He received a weekly stipend from the community so that he could devote his entire time to study and writing. The money came from a legacy of his great-great-grandfather, Rabbi Moses Rivkes, to the community and was intended to help any descendant who devoted himself to the study of Judaism. Scholars soon acclaimed Elijah as the Gaon (Talmudic scholar par excellence), while the people called him Hasid (saint). These titles gradually took the place of his personal name.

Elijah lived in Vilna as a recluse; he slept two hours a day and took little nourishment. Despite his asceticism, Elijah was acclaimed throughout the Jewish world as the Talmudic scholar whose opinions on Jewish law were considered final. His views on contemporary communal problems were sought far and wide. In 1755, when Elijah was thirty-five years old, he was asked by the sixty-five-year-old Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschuetz to render an opinion concerning a controversy between Eybeschuetz and Rabbi Jacob Emden.

Elijah was confronted with the problems of two eighteenth century movements, the Haskalah (enlightenment) and Hasidism. The Hasidic movement was founded by Baՙal Shem Tov. Baՙal Shem Tov taught that God should be served with joy and that asceticism might be the root of evil. Rabbis and scholars of the time were perplexed by the Hasidic movement, which gave a preeminent place in Judaism not to learning but to emotion and sentiment. It valued religious exultation over holy knowledge. As Hasidism extended its foothold in Eastern Europe, there emerged an antagonist movement, the Haskalah. Haskalah called for rationalism and realism and opposed the antirationalistic tendency of Hasidism. In their nascent forms, Hasidism and Haskalah endangered the integrity of established Judaism; there was too much exultation in Hasidism and too much rationalism in Haskalah—either extreme undermined the Jewish tradition. Elijah, confronted with these extremes, tried to harmonize between the heart and the mind to prevent Judaism from being crushed between Haskalah and Hasidism. He vehemently opposed Hasidism, which rejected the scholarly approach to the Torah that Elijah thought so important, and he supported the effort to excommunicate followers of Hasidism.

Elijah wrote more than seventy works and commentaries. More than fifty have been published, though others are no longer extant. He considered Joseph ben Ephraim Karo’s Shulḥan arukh (1565; Code of Jewish Law, 1927) to contain the authentic gist of Talmudic law. Elijah wrote a commentary on the Shulḥan arukh known as the Beՙur ha-Gra (1803; the commentary of Ha-gaon Rabbi Eliya-hu). In his commentary, he traced every statement, decision, custom, and tradition expressed or validated in the former work to its source in the Talmud and Talmudic thought.

Elijah wrote commentaries on nearly all the books of the Old Testament and on several books of the Mishnah. Elijah’s writings cover the Kabbala, algebra, trigonometry, astronomy, and grammar. He urged the translation of Euclid into Hebrew and examined the historical works of Flavius Josephus rendered into Hebrew. His favoring of secular study, however, does not place him in the camp of the Haskalah, which aimed at the substitution of reason for faith. He was, however, a critic of those scholars who relied too much on spiritualist speculation. He was even critical of Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) for having interpreted certain passages of the Bible or Talmud in a philosophical manner, ignoring their literal meanings.

After Elijah reached the age of forty, he devoted most of his time to educating his disciples. He surrounded himself with a number of students who were gifted with brilliant minds and exhibited genuine piety. They became messengers in spreading the teachings of their beloved master. Elijah warned his students against wasting their precious time in pilpul (dialectic excess). He taught them to use clear thinking and to search for truth painstakingly. He provided his students with his corrected texts of the great books of halakic literature, the result of years of studying the Talmud. Elijah showed clearly that corrections made in a passage of the Talmud could change one’s interpretation of the text. He opened to his students a new frontier: critical examination of the text. Elijah advocated not only proper intellectual training but also the cultivation of morality. He held that, in order for Judaism to have its divine effect, the heart must be pure. He compared the Torah to rain. Just as rain nourishes the earth so the Torah nourishes the soul.

Elijah also inspired Jews to emigrate to Israel. It was his lifelong dream to settle in the Holy Land. He once undertook the dangerous and arduous trip but for unknown reasons decided to return to Vilna. The Vilna emigration that he had encouraged began in 1808, eleven years after his death; hundreds of Lithuanian Jews settled in Palestine. Six of his disciples headed the movement.

In a well-known legend, Elijah was passing through a crowd of playing children and noticed that they were shouting, “Der Vilner Gaon, Der Vilner Gaon.” He stopped and said to the children, “If you only will it, you too, will become Geonim” (preeminent scholars). Elijah’s humbleness belied his great intelligence and piety; few scholars have been as influential.

Significance

It is rare in Jewish history for one man to leave behind a legacy of great works in rabbinic literature, significant individual contributions, noble deeds, and outstanding personal attributes. Elijah ben Solomon, revered by all, was such a man. His creations and involvement are those of a complicated individual and not simply reflections of the time and place in which he lived. An outstanding rabbi, legal codifier, scholar, thinker, author, and humanitarian, Elijah shared in the political, social, communal, and cultural trials and tribulations of his time, but he transcended these in continuing humanity’s age-old examination of its purpose in life and its relationship to God and to one another. His spirit and writings made important contributions to his generation, and they continue to have meaning and will remain inspiring to future generations as well. His impact on Torah scholarship and on the establishment and maintenance of rabbinical seminaries is immeasurable. His contributions to rabbinic literature show him to be one of the most prolific and influential Talmudic scholars in history.

Bibliography

Dubnow, S. M. History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Translated by I. Friedlander. Vol. 1. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1916. An excellent history of the period based on primary documents on the life and work of Elijah.

Etkes, Immanuel. The Gaon of Vilna: The Man and His Image. Translated by Jeffrey M. Green. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Seeks to demystify Elijah by tracing the various myths surrounding him and revealing the “real” life and character of the man. One of the few books devoted to Elijah that has been translated into English.

Graetz, Heinrich. History of the Jews. Vol. 5. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1895. A scholarly source on the life of Elijah. Contains important information on the controversy between Elijah and the proponents of Hasidism.

Malamet, A., et al. A History of the Jewish People. Edited by H. H. Ben-Sasson. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976. Provides some background on Elijah’s life and is an excellent source on the controversy over Hasidism.

Schochet, Elijah Judah. The Hasidic Movement and the Gaon of Vilna. Northvale, N.J.: J. Aronson, 1994. Discusses the conflict over Hasidism in the eighteenth century and examines why Elijah opposed the Hasidic movement.

Waxman, Meyer. From the Middle of the Eighteenth Century to 1880. Vol. 3 in A History of Jewish Literature. New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1960. An excellent work. Contains information on the life and writings of Elijah.

Zinberg, Israel. Hasidism and Englightenment, 1780-1820. Vol. 9 in A History of Jewish Literature. Translated by Bernard Martin. Cleveland, Ohio: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1972-1978. A discussion of Elijah’s thoughts on the controversy over Hasidism.