[Avodah] Simchas Torah & a Lost Minhag of the Gra

[Professor L. Levine]

>From Simchas Torah & a Lost Minhag of the Gra


Chol HaMoed Succos is the Yarzheit of the Vilna Gaon (for an earlier post on the Gra see here<http://seforim.blogspot.com/2007/10/pitfalls-of-disagreeing-with-gra.html> and here<http://seforim.blogspot.com/2010/05/review-bekurim-with-gra-commentary.html>). In this post I hope to show a source for a “forgotten” Minhag of the Gra.
In 1921 the great bibliographer (and much more) Yitzchak Rivkind described a strange custom he saw during the time he learned in Volozhin (after it was reopened and headed by R’ Rephael Shapiro), in an article about Minhag HaGra. On Simchas Torah they would open the Aron Kodesh when saying Aleinu, both at night and during the day, and while singing the Niggun of Mussaf of Yom Kippur would bow on the floor exactly like we do on Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur. When he asked for the source of this Minhag he was told it comes from the Gra. When he visited Vilna sometime later he found the only place that they observed this unique Minhag was in the Kloiz of the Gra, but nowhere else in Vilna.


See the above URL for more.


YL
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