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<font size=3>At 01:54 PM 12/6/2013, R. Ben Waxman wrote:<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">I agree 100% that no one should
criticize someone who doesn't eat <br>
outside of his own home. On the other hand, I also don't believe
that <br>
this particular mode of behavior is one that people should be taught is
<br>
a "goal", a "higher level", "something to
emulate".<br>
</blockquote><br>
Will you extend this to other kinds of behavior? For
example, Shaul Stampfer writes in his article The Image of the Gaon
of Vilna in his book Families, Rabbis, and Education regarding the Vilna
Gaon<br><br>
There were also some aspects of the Gaon's personality that have
been<br>
somewhat under-emphasized in biographies and that may well have had
an<br>
impact on his contemporaries in terms of limiting his influence. The
most<br>
striking of these aspects is the relationship of the Gaon with the
members of<br>
his family, and the Gaon's views on how family relationships should be.
Today<br>
few, if any, would present the Gaon's behaviour as a model, and indeed
little is<br>
said in contemporary literature about his family life. Rabbi Avraham, son
of<br>
the Gaon, described his father in the following way:<br><br>
How devoted he was in his soul to avoid the company of his household and
his sons<br>
and daughters. He sought only to dwell in the pure fear of God ... so
that he never<br>
asked his sons and daughters about their livelihoods or their situations.
In his life he<br>
never wrote them a letter to ask [about] their health. If one of his sons
came to visit<br>
him, even though he was very happy-for he had not seen him for a year or
two nevertheless<br>
he would never ask them about the situation of their sons and their<br>
wives or their livelihood, and when the son had rested for an hour or so,
he would<br>
urge him to ren1rn to his studies.<br><br>
Rabbi Avraham went on to describe how his father would often leave Vilna
to<br>
study in isolation. On one occasion the Gaon's son, Shelomoh Zalman (then
5<br>
years old), fell seriously ill just when his father had planned to depart
for a<br>
period of study in isolation. The Gaon did not change his plans. After
a<br>
month of intense study he remembered, in the bath house (where he
could<br>
not think about Torah), that his son had been ill and he immediately
went<br>
back to Vilna to find out how he was. Both his unwillingness to change
plans<br>
because of his son's illness and the sudden recollection and return to
Vilna<br>
were no doubt somewhat bizarre to the Jews of Vilna of his time. The
members<br>
of the Gaon's family understood this withdrawal as an expression of
his<br>
commitment to Torah study, and they emphasized that the Gaon needed<br>
great willpower to overcome his personal desire to spend time with
his<br>
children. At the same time their pain seems evident and their efforts to
explain<br>
his behaviour suggest that they suspected that contemporaries might
have<br>
found it difficult to understand this type of behaviour, ·which certainly
was not<br>
typical of contemporary rabbis.<br><br>
Similar descriptions of the Gaon's lack of involvement in family
matters<br>
are found in the introduction to the Gaon's commentary on the Zohar by
his<br>
grandson, Rabbi Ya'akov ben Avraham. Upon visiting his grandfather,
Rabbi<br>
Ya'akov noted how his grandfather did not ask him how he and his
family<br>
were, and he clearly thought this to be unusual behaviour. <br><br>
Will you also say, "I also don't believe that this particular
mode of behavior is one that people should be taught is a 'goal', a
'higher level', 'something to emulate'" about this behavior of the
Gaon and that people should not emulate and praise his total commitment
to Torah learning? Many is the time that we hear about how much
time this or that Gadol spent learning and dealing with others.
This clearly takes away from the time and attention that he could
have given to family matters. <br><br>
Yitzchok Levine<br>
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