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Who Is Buried in the Vilna Gaon's Tomb?

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Who Is Buried in the Vilna Gaon's Tomb? Who is Buried in the Vilna Gaon’s Tomb? A Contribution Toward the Identification of the Authentic Grave of the Vilna Gaon Who is Buried in the Vilna Gaon’s Tomb? A Contribution Toward the Identification of the Authentic Grave of the Vilna Gaon by Shnayer Z. Leiman 1. Prologue This essay attempts to identify the authentic grave of the Vilna Gaon (d. 1797).1 As will become apparent, it surely is not the grave that Jewish pilgrims are shown today when they visit Vilna. We shall attempt to identify his על פי שני עדים :authentic grave by applying the biblical rule a matter is established by the testimony of two“ יקום דבר witnesses.” We shall cite two different kinds of witnesses. ,.i.e ,תורה שבכתב One witness will represent primarily literary evidence. The other witness will represent .i.e., oral history , תורה שבעל פה primarily 2. Introduction Three Jewish cemeteries have served the Vilna Jewish community throughout its long history. The first Jewish cemetery, often called by its Yiddish nameder alter was north of the early modern ,(בית עולם הישן :feld (Hebrew Jewish Ghetto of Vilna, and just north of the Vilia River (today called the Neris) in the town of Shnipishok. It served as the main Jewish cemetery until 1830, when, due to lack of space, it was closed by the municipal authorities. The following photograph, taken in 1912, presents an aerial view of the first Jewish cemetery, looking north from Castle Hill in the old city. One can see the Neris River flowing south of the cemetery; portions of the fence surrounding the cemetery; and the house of the Jewish caretaker of the cemetery near the north-western entrance to the cemetery. (Each of the following images may be enlarged and viewed in higher resolution by clicking on them.) Such famous rabbis as R. Moshe Rivkes (d. 1671), and R. Avraham Danzig (d. 1820), author ,באר הגולה author of were buried in der alter feld. See the following ,חיי אדם of .in the old cemetery חיי אדם photograph for the grave of the The second Jewish cemetery, in use from 1831 until 1941, was east of Vilna proper, on a mountain overlooking the nearby neighborhood called Zaretcha. Here were buried famous Maskilim such as Adam Ha-Kohen Lebensohn (d. 1878), and famous rabbinic scholars such as R. Shmuel Strashun (d. 1872), R. Avraham Avele Pasvaler (d. 1836), R. Shlomo Ha-Kohen (d. 1906), and R. Hayyim Ozer Grodzenski (d. 1940). With 70,000 graves in place in 1940, the second cemetery ran out of space, and a third Jewish cemetery was acquired and dedicated by the Vilna Jewish community shortly before the outbreak of World War II. It lies north-west of central Vilna, in Saltonishkiu in the Sheshkines region, and is still in use today by the Jewish community in Vilna. The Vilna Gaon, who died in 1797, was, of course, buried in the first Jewish cemetery. That cemetery was destroyed in the Stalinist period circa 1950, but just before it was destroyed we are informed by the sources that the Gaon was moved, perhaps temporarily to the second cemetery,2 but certainly to the third cemetery, where he rests today. Let us enter the third cemetery and stand before the Ohel ha-Gra. It is a modest and narrow Ohel. When one enters the Ohel, one sees seven graves laid out from left to right, with five tombstones embedded in the wall at the heads of the graves. The tour guides inform the visitors that the Gaon is buried in the fourth grave from the left. Indeed, directly above his grave, embedded in the wall, is a tombstone that clearly identifies the grave as that of the Gaon. One wonders who else is buried in the Ohel. The narrow confines of the Ohel, and the poor lighting in the Ohel, make it almost impossible to read the tombstones. One American publication identifies the others as R. Shlomo Zalman, the father of the Gra (d. 1758); R. Avraham, the son of the Gra (d. 1809); R. Yehoshua Heschel, Chief Rabbi of Vilna (d. 1749); R. Shmuel b. Avigdor, last Chief Rabbi of Vilna (d.1793); R. Avraham and Avraham b. Avraham, the ;חיי אדם Danzig, author of legendary Ger Zedek of Vilna. Another American publication presents a different list that includes R. Moshe Rivkes, .and Traina, the mother of the Gaon , באר הגולה author of the In Israel, several published lists know for a fact that R. Shmuel Strashun was moved together with the Gaon, and now rests in the new Ohel. All these accounts are imaginary.3 When one reads the accounts of the reinterment of the Gaon, and of those buried in his Ohel today, it becomes apparent than more than bodies were moved. Wherever possible, the original tombstones were moved together with the dead and then reset at the head of the graves. All one has to do is read the tombstone inscriptions in order to identify who was moved. Reading from left to right, buried in the Ohel ha-Gra are: 1. R. Zvi Hirsch Pesseles (d. 1817). A relative of the Gaon, whose grandfather, R. Eliyah Pesseles (d. 1771), helped finance the Gaon’s study activity. 2. R. Yissachar Baer b. R. Shlomo Zalman (d. 1807). A younger brother of the Gaon, he was a master of rabbinic literature who was also adept in the exact sciences. 3. R. Noah Mindes Lipshutz (d. 1797). Distinguished Kabbalist, He .נפלאות חדשות and פרפראות לחכמה he was the author of married Minda (hence: Mindes), the daughter of R. Eliyahu Pesseles, mentioned above (grave 1). A close associate of the Gaon during his lifetime, he and the Gaon share a single tombstone in death. 4. The Gaon. 5. Minda Lipshutz (date of death unknown). She was the daughter of R. Eliyah Pesseles and the wife of R. Noah Mindes Lipshutz. 6. Devorah Pesseles (date of death unknown). She was the wife of R. Dov Baer Pesseles, a son of R. Eliyahu Pesseles, and the mother of R. Zvi Hirsch Pesseles (grave 1). The seventh grave is unmarked, that is, it is without a tombstone. The tour guides will tell you that it contains the ashes of Avraham b. Avraham, the legendary Ger Zedek of Vilna.4 A pattern emerges. Clearly, the original plot in the Shnipishok cemetery belonged to the Pesseles family, one of the wealthiest and most distinguished in Vilna. The Gaon found his resting place here due to the generosity of his relatives and friends in the Pesseles family. More importantly, when a hard decision had to be made in 1950 or so regarding who should be moved from the old cemetery in Shnipishok, it was not the greatest rabbis who were moved and reinterred. It was neither R. Moshe Rivkes, nor R. Yehoshua Heschel, nor R. Shmuel b. Avigdor, nor R. Avraham Danzig, nor R. Shmuel Strashun. Nor was it the Gaon’s father, mother, or son. It was the Gaon and the persons to his immediate right and left; the Gaon saved not only himself, but also those buried in proximity to him. 3. The Problem While the identification seems reasonable, the ordering of the graves is problematic. Anyone familiar with traditional Jewish cemeteries will know that some keep men and women separate, while others are mixed. Clearly, the old Jewish cemetery in Shnipishok was mixed. But even when mixed, husbands and wives tended to be buried next to each other. So too mothers and sons. Yet in the Ohel ha-Gra, R. Zvi Hirsch Pesseles is buried at the extreme left, whereas his mother Devora is buried at the extreme right. Neither is buried next to his or her spouse. Even more puzzling is the fact that the Gaon rests in between Rabbi Noah Mindes Lipshutz and his wife Minda Lipshutz. Now it may be that Rabbi and Mrs. Lipshutz were not on speaking terms, but this was hardly the way to decide where the Gaon should be buried. The problem assumes prodigious proportions when we ,קורות בית-העולמין הישן בוילנה examine Israel Klausner’s published in Vilna in 1935. Klausner visited the Shnipishok Jewish cemetery, recorded some of the tombstone inscriptions of its most famous rabbis and, more importantly, drew a precise map of the location of each grave. It is important to note his orientation, as he drew the map. Klausner stood at the northern entrance to the Jewish cemetery, looking southward toward the Vilia River. See the depiction of the Ohel ha-Gra in Klausner’s map. The graves in the Ohel ha-Gra, from left to right, are numbered 20-27. Some of those numbers represent two graves of persons buried immediately next to each other. Klausner, in his narrative, identifies the occupants of graves 20-27 as follows: ר’ שלמה זלמן אבי הגר”א (a .20 ר’ אליהו (b שתדלן (ר’ יהודה ב”ר אליעזר (יסו”ד (a .21 (חיה אשת ר’ יהודה ב”ר אליעזר (יסו”ד (b ר’ צבי הירש פעסעלעס .22 דבורה פעסעלעס .23 מינדה פעסעלעס ליפשיץ .24 ר’ נח מינדעס ליפשיץ (a .25 הגר”א (b ר’ ישכר בער אחי הגר”א .26 ר’ יהושע העשיל ב”ר שאול .27 This, then, is a complete list of all those who were buried in the original Ohel ha-Gra in the old Jewish cemetery. That Klausner has the order perfectly right can be seen from the following photograph. in פ”נ הגאון רבינו אליהו Notice the inscription the center of the photograph, near the roof-top of the Ohel. Turning to the extreme left of the Ohel, where the roof slopes down almost to the ground, one can see two grave markers above a single tombstone.
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