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<p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0">From <span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style, serif;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Simchas Torah & a Lost Minhag of the Gra</b></span></span></p>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0.07in; margin-top: 0.07in;" align="JUSTIFY"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Chol HaMoed Succos is the Yarzheit of the Vilna Gaon (for an earlier post on the Gra see <a href="http://seforim.blogspot.com/2007/10/pitfalls-of-disagreeing-with-gra.html" id="LPlnk82253" class="OWAAutoLink" previewremoved="true">here</a> and <a href="http://seforim.blogspot.com/2010/05/review-bekurim-with-gra-commentary.html" id="LPlnk623066" class="OWAAutoLink" previewremoved="true">here</a>).
In this post I hope to show a source for a “forgotten” Minhag of the Gra.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">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), </span></span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: medium;">in an article about Minhag HaGra</span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style, serif; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">.
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.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: medium; text-align: left;"></span>
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<p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0">See the above URL for more.</p>
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<p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0">YL<br>
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