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Updated: June 23, 2025
But the Rabbi suffered considerably from his religion on his journeys. Dr. Schechter tells us how the Gaon Elijah got out of his carriage to say his prayer, and, as the driver knew that the Rabbi would not interrupt his devotions, he promptly made off, carrying away the Gaon's property. But the account was not all on one side.
Wynn Westcott says that "Hebrew tradition assigns the oldest parts of the Zohar to a date antecedent to the building of the second Temple;" and Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai is said to have written down some of it in the first century A.D. The Sepher Yetzirah is spoken of by Saadjah Gaon, who died A.D. 940, as "very ancient."
The organization of the Rabbinical Conferences, or the "Synods of the Four Countries," formed the keystone of this intricate social-spiritual hierarchy. One element was lacking, there was no versatile, commanding thinker like Saadia Gaon. Secular knowledge and philosophy were under the ban in Poland. Rabbinism absorbed the whole output of intellectual energy.
His breadth of view and his sympathetic disposition gradually won him the respect and love of all who knew him. The zaddikim Abraham of Turisk and Israel Rasiner were his lifelong friends; the Talmudist Strashun acknowledged his indebtedness to him, and Rabbi Abele of Vilna remarked jestingly that the only fault to be found with the Te'udah was that its author was not the Gaon Elijah.
The residence of the Gaon was a Jewish metropolis as early as the eighteenth century, and during the whole of the nineteenth century Wilna was the Jewish city par excellence, a distinction to which it was helped by several facts by the systematic and intentional elimination of the Polish element, especially since the insurrection of 1831, by the prohibition of the Polish language, the closing of the university, and the absence of a Lithuanian population.
Their number increased when the Hasidic movement threatened to render the knowledge of the Talmud unpopular; and when the Maskilim, too, made them a target for their attacks, there was hardly a town in which such institutions were not to be found. There the cherished hopes of the Gaon were finally realized. Within its walls gathered the elect of the Russo-Jewish youth for almost a century.
We find them in almost every part of the civilized world, and their number increases with the disappearance of prejudice. Some were noted Talmudists, such as Solomon Luria and Samuel ben Mattathias. To the same class belong Moses Katzenellenbogen and his son Hayyim, who was styled Gaon. In 1657 Hayyim visited Italy.
I have preached at the synagogues, and everywhere people have said it was like the Wilna Gaon come again. From the neighboring villages for miles and miles the pious have come to be blessed by me. Look at my testimonials from all the greatest saints and savants. But in England in England alone what is my welcome?
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