Background
He was born in Selets, near Grodno, to a family of Talmudic scholars.
He was born in Selets, near Grodno, to a family of Talmudic scholars.
A child prodigy, by the age of six he was studying the Bible and the Talmud on his own, and giving learned discourses at the Great Synagogue in Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania), the famous center of Jewish learning.
As he grew older, he intensified his studies and mastered all branches of rabbinic knowledge. Unusual for Talmudic sages of the time, he was also versed in secular subjects, including philosophy, history, astronomy, mathematics, and anatomy, which he studied in order to illumine his knowledge of all aspects of Judaism.
For the first half of his life he lived austerely as a recluse. At the age of twenty, he left his wife and home in Vilna and spent eight years in Jewish communities in Poland and Germany, and then returned to Vilna, where he spent the rest of his life, except for an unsuccessful attempt to travel to the Holy Land. A special house of study was built for him where he spent his days, but he refused any public office and devoted himself to scholarship. His Talmudic expertise covered not 'only the Babylonian Talmud but also the Jerusalem Talmud, which was exceptional at that period.
He also became more involved in community affairs and was the effective head of the community of Lithuania and indeed of Russian Jewry. When he was forty he began to lecture to a group of disciples who spread his teachings throughout the rabbinical academies of Lithuania.
His disciples posthumously published his writings, because Elijah refrained from publishing his works in his lifetime. The seventy works he left included commentaries on most of the Bible, the Mishnah, both Talmuds, and the Shulhan Arukh code, writings on the mystical classics, and works on mathematics, astronomy, biblical geography, and Hebrew grammar.
He found his type of Judaism challenged by two main developments — Haskalah (Enlightment) and the Hasidic (pietist) movement. He rejected the priority of rationalism that characterized Haskalah, insisting on the primacy of Torah and halakhah. His bitterest fights were with the Hasidim, whose emotional, intuitive, and often anti-intellectual form of Judaism contradicted the traditional emphasis on learning. Hasidism was sweeping large areas of eastern Europe, even reaching Lithuania, and Elijah took the lead in combatting its spread.
He was appalled by the apparent levity of the Hasidism in their attitude to the Torah and concerned that it might develop into a pseudomessianic movement that would be as disastrous as that of Shabbetai Tzevi. Convinced that the Hasidism were distorting Judaism, he issued repeated excommunications of the new sect and when a group of Hasidic leaders approached his place of study in Vilna in an attempt to meet with him, he refused to see them and they were turned away. Under Elijah’s guidance, Vilna became the center of anti-Hasidic activities, and most Lithuanian Jews Mitnaggedim (opponents) of Hasidism.
His approach was critical, intellectual, and single-minded — he was said to have slept only two hours each night and to have forbidden any conversation not devoted to the Torah. His teaching was logical and he opposed the hairsplitting casuistry that characterized much Talmudic study. The Gaon paid special attention to the various manuscripts of the Talmud in order to arrive at correct readings.
Although Elijah’s approach was rational and intellectual, he was also a student of Jewish mysticism. However, he separated his mystical visions from his scholarly and legal writings. Some of his disciples became the great personalities of the succeeding generation and the inspirers of the famous Lithuanian yeshivot (rabbinical academies), such as Hayyim of Volozhin.
Quotations:
• It is impossible to understand the fundamentals of creation, how all segments are closely tied and wonderfully arranged, unless we infer the unity of the Creator and of reality.
• The commandments are interwoven and supplement each other as they are one commandment, one single truth.
• Desires must be purified and idealized, not eradicated.
• Life is a series of vexations and pains, and sleepless nights are the common lot.
• It is better to pray at home, for in the synagogue it is impossible to escape envy and hearing idle talk.
• Like rain, the Torah nourishes useful plants and poisonous weeds.
• The tongue’s sin weighs as much as all other sins together.
• Only things acquired by hard labor and great struggle are of any value.