Leiman Vilna Gaon Tomb

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Who is Buried in the Vilna Gaons 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 authentic grave

by applying the biblical rule: a matter is established by thetestimony of two witnesses.We shall cite two different kinds of witnesses. Onewitness will represent primarily ,i.e., literary evidence. The otherwitness will represent primarily , i.e., oral history.

2. Introduction

Three Jewish cemeteries have served the Vilna Jewish community throughout

its long history. The first Jewish cemetery, often called by its Yiddish name der alter

feld(Hebrew: ), was north of the early modern 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 followingimages may be enlarged and viewed in higher resolution by clicking on them.)


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Such famous rabbis as R. Moshe Rivkes (d. 1671), author of, and R.Avraham Danzig (d. 1820), author of , were buried in der alter feld. See thefollowing photograph for the grave of the in the old cemetery.

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


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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.


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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. Shmuelb. Avigdor, last Chief Rabbi of Vilna (d.1793); R. Avraham Danzig, author of ; and Avraham b. Avraham, the legendary Ger Zedek of Vilna. AnotherAmerican publication presents a different list that includes R. Moshe Rivkes, author

of the , and Traina, the mother of the Gaon. In Israel, several published listsknow 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 inthe 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 Gaons 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.


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3. R. Noah Mindes Lipshutz (d. 1797). Distinguished Kabbalist, he was the author

of and . He married Minda (hence: Mindes), thedaughter 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 Gaons 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 examine Israel

Klausners , published in Vilna in 1935. Klausnervisited 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 Klausners map.


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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:


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20. a) b)

21. a) b)

22.

23.

24.


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25. a) b)

26.

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.

Notice the inscription in 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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When enlarged, the inscriptions above the tombstone clearly read (from left to

right): and , exactly in the order recorded by Klausner(see above, grave number 20). When we compare Klausners list with the present

occupants of the Ohel ha-Gra, it becomes clear that those who moved the Gra from

the first to the third cemetery, moved the graves numbered 22-26, a total of six

persons altogether, from the original Ohel ha-Gra. The seventh grave, unmarked,

remains unidentified and could have come from any part of the old cemetery, and not

necessarily from the Ohel ha-Gra.

When we enter the Ohel ha-Gra today, we need to bear in mind that we are

entering from the south and looking north. We see the mirror image of what Klausner

depicted on his map. Thus the expected order today should be:


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The expected order solves all our problems. On the extreme right, Devorah

and her son R. Zvi Hirsch are buried next to each other. In the center, R. Noah and his

wife Minda are buried next to each other. And the Gra is second from the left. It is the

actual order that creates our problem. Devorah and R. Zvi Hirsch are separated;

neither is buried next to his or her spouse. The Gra is buried in between R. Noah

Lipshutz and his wife Minda.

One more piece of evidence needs to be introduced before we attempt to solve

the problem. Israel Cohen, British Zionist and world traveler, visited Vilna twicebefore World War II. Regarding the Shnipishok cemetery, he records the following:

Most famous of all is the tomb of the Gaon Elijah, who lies in the

company of a few other pietists on a spot covered

by a modest mausoleum which is entered by an iron-barred door.


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the Gra was to the left of R. Noah, and R. Noah was to the left of, and next to, his

wife Minda. In the new Jewish cemetery, the six graves were laid out exactly as in the

old cemetery, with the exception of R. Zvi Hirsch as indicated. But it was decided to

place the original tombstones inside the Ohel, at the head of each of the graves.

Instead of facing in a northerly direction, with texts that could be read only by

standing outside the Ohel, the tombstones, now reversed, faced in a southerly

direction, with texts that could be read only when standing inside the Ohel. Doubtless,this was done in order to protect the historic tombstones from exposure to the

elements, from deterioration, and from vandalism. Also, the tombstones now

immediately identified who was buried in each grave. Unfortunately, when the single

tombstone shared by the Gra and R. Noah was reversed and set up inside the Ohel, it

automatically (and wrongly) identified the third grave from the left as R. Noah, and

the fourth grave from the left as the Gra, and caused a split between R. Noah and his

wife. In fact, the Gra is the third grave from the left, and R. Noah is the fourth grave

from the left and R. Noah is properly buried next to his wife Minda. In other words,

all Jews who visit the grave of the Gra today, pray, and leave qvitlach, at the wrong

grave (i.e., at the grave of R. Noah Mindes Lipshutz).

The above solution was based upon an examination of the literary evidence,and upon an examination of photographs preserved mostly in books. I call this (one witness), that is, the testimony of (i.e., the literary evidence).But a matter established by only one witness is precarious at best.

6Intuitively I was

persuaded by the one witness, but hesitated to put the solution in print until more

evidence was forthcoming. Fortunately, a surprise second witness has come

forward (i.e., oral history). Rabbi Yitzhak Zilber (d. 2003) wasa courageous Jew who lived most of his life under Soviet repression between the

years 1917 and 1972, before ultimately settling in Israel. He published a riveting

autobiography in Russian in 2003. It has since been translated into Hebrew and

English. In his autobiography, Zilber describes how in 1970, under Communist rule,

he visited the Ohel ha-Gra in Vilna. The Jew who took him to the Ohel hadparticipated in the transfer of the Gra from the first Jewish cemetery in Shnipishok to

the third Jewish cemetery in Saltonishkiu. As they stood before the Gaons grave, the

Jew turned to Zilber and said:7

Remember the following forever: the Gaons tombstone is above the

fourth grave from the left, but the Gaons body is in the third grave [from

the left].

A matter is established by the testimony of two witnesses.

NOTES

1This essay should not be confused with an earlier essay of mine with a similar title,

Who is Buried in the Vilna Gaons Tomb? A Mysterious Tale with Seven

Plots,Jewish Action, Winter 1998, pp. 36-41. The primary focus of the earlier essay

was on the identification of the six persons buried together with the Vilna Gaon in his

mausoleum (the Ohel Ha-Gra). The primary focus of this essay is on the identification

of the grave of the Vilna Gaon himself. A version of this essay was read at a


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conference in honor of Professor Daniel Sperber, held at Bar-Ilan University on June

13, 2011. It is presented here in honor of the Vilna Gaons 215th

yahrzeit on 19

Tishre, 5773.

2The claim that the Vilna Gaon was moved temporarily from the first to the second

Jewish cemetery appears, among many other places,in Y. Alfasi, ed., !(Tel-Aviv, 1993), p. 9; Y. Epstein, "

!, October-November 1996, pp. 5-6; andN.N. Shneidman,Jerusalem of Lithuania (Oakville, Ontario, 1998), p. 161. An

examination of eye-witness accounts of the reburial of the Gaon, and of much other

evidence, yields the ineluctable conclusion that the Gaon was moved only once,

directly from the first to the third Jewish cemetery.

3See the references cited in theJewish Action essay (above, note 1).

4So reads the Hebrew sign above the entrance to the Ohel Ha-Gra. But the Ohel Ha-

Gra was constructed over a three-year period between 1956 and 1958. I cannot say

with certainty when the sign first went up, but logic dictates it did not go up before

there was an Ohel. In all the early photographs of the Ohel I have seen, there was no

sign at all. It surely wasnt there during the period of Soviet domination of Lithuania,

which means it first when up sometime after 1991. As such, it is hardly evidence for

who is buried in the Ohel Ha-Gra. More importantly, one of the participants in the

reinterment of the Vilna Gaon testified that he and his colleagues wanted to move the

remains of Avraham ben Avraham, the Ger Zedek of Vilna, but could not locate his

ashes in the old Jewish cemetery. See R.Yitzchak Zilber, To Remain a

Jew (Jerusalem, 2010), pp. 389-390.

5For side by side transcriptions of the epitaphs on their tombstone, in clear Hebrew

font, see R. Noah Mindes Lipshutz, (Brooklyn, 1995), p. 17.


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6I was plagued by the remote possibility that the movers, precisely because the shared

tombstone required the Gaon to be to the right of R. Noah, switched the remains of

the Gaon and R. Noah, and deliberately buried the Gaon in between Minda and R.

Noah. (I considered this a remote possibility, because it is highly unlikely that any

rabbi would allow such tampering with who was buried to the immediate left and

right of the Gaon. As is well known, R. Hayyim Zvi Shifrin [d. 1952] presided over

the reinterment of the Gaon. See R. Yaakov Shifrin, [Jerusalem, 1981], pp.26-30.) If so, all the tombstones are accurately positioned in the Ohel Ha-Gra, even

today. Cf. my deliberations inAmerican Jewish Monitor, October 24, 2003, p. 18.

7


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R. Yitzchak Zilber, op. cit. (above, note 4), p. 389.

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Leiman Vilna Gaon Tomb