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

[Zalman Alpert]

On Sep 30, 2018 5:43 AM, "Professor L. Levine" <llevine at stevens.edu> wrote:
> From *Simchas Torah & a Lost Minhag of the Gra*
..
> 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 ...
>               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.

The kluiz of the GRaA in Vilna was essentially the only place in Vilna
and all of Lithuania that followed minhage HAgra to the kotzo shel yud
Chaim Grade a lost talmid of the Chazon Ish and a Vilna native mentions
this in his wonderful novels about shil life in Vilna

Because the Jslm settlement in early 19th cen was started by disciples
of the GRAthe Rivlins,etc these minhogim becamr and remain the standard
for at least the yishuv hayoshen of Jslm and beyond that group

And thats how we know these customs in realism rather than from seforim
The Litthuanian yrshivas did not follow these customs nor did kohol,and
certainly not the chassidim of Lithuania who after WwI played an impt
role in Jew rel life in greater lita including Vilna

A gut kvittel