Gaon
Shrine
Fraud

RT3

The title of Shnayer Z. Leiman’s 1998/1999 article (originally published in the OU’s Jewish Action Magazine) — “Who is buried in the Vilna Gaon’s Tomb?” — would seem to imply that it intends to question the authenticity of the Vilna Gaon’s current burial tomb shrine. Is the Gaon really buried in it? Is anyone really buried in it? However, in fact the article is far more literary than real. It is concerned with patching up the numerous literary inconsistencies and discrepancies among certain Lithuanian Jewish (Litvak) publications. Leiman shows in great, precise and complex literary detail that these publications such as ArtScroll, Yated Ne'eman, Ha-Zofeh, Dos Yiddische Licht, not only repeatedly contradict each others reports regarding the Gaon’s tomb, but also contradict their own reports. What ArtScroll, for example, says in its 1994 history series is very different from what it says in 1978. Now, in theory, literary truth does not have to be real. On the contrary, literary truth can actually cover up and distort real truth — as a fraudulent accountant, for example, ‘fixes’ the company books. (Indeed, this is the very essence of Roman Catholic Scholasticism and the very mark of Jewish Pilpul (inherited from (Greek Philosophical) Rationalism).)

Leiman points out that:

“Such [literary] discrepancies hardly inspire confidence in the sources, as the reader tries to determine the [real?] truth...” And “It is sad that contemporary Jewish publications tend to select a particular account, embellish it and publish it as fact — without alerting the reader to the profound uncertainties that abound.” Furthermore,“...the more one investigates reports on this matter in Jewish periodical literature, the more confused one becomes!”

Leiman’s article is also concerned with the Gaon’s very image and identity. Up until now the [real?] Gaon has been portrayed as an “unrivaled Torah[/Talmudic] scholar and pietist” and as an expert in the “exact sciences (such as outmoded (Euclidean) Geometry and backward (Aristotelian) Physics which is completely unreal and does not contain even one single real and true physical principle)”. However, now (in 1997), the Lithuanians (Jewish and non-Jewish) are presenting him as a “national [Lithuanian] hero”. In the opinion of Leiman (and others), this is a distorted “caricature” which “smacks of intellectual dishonesty” and is a disgrace to the Gaon’s real and true image. Leiman tells us that the Lithuanians erected “his bust” and repeatedly praised...

“...his intellectual openness; his humanistic values; his tolerance, which was even harnessed to buttress a plan for advancing Jewish-Christian (Roman Catholic) relations; and his almost Erasmus-like humanism, which led him to perform scientific research in parallel with his religious studies... Such revisionism smacks of intellectual dishonesty. Surely, some of the Lithuanian academics (Jewish and non-Jewish) who participated in the commemoration knew better. Even if well-meaning, these efforts on the part of the Lithuanian authorities were suffused with anachronism, caricature and factual error.”

Furthermore, the article cites a relevant highly detailed description of the removal of the Gaon’s body in an ArtScroll publication which includes the following:

When the three finished opening the Gaon's grave and lifted him into a coffin, they were astounded to find that his body had not degenerated nor rotted at all in nearly two centuries. They were able to discern that even the hairs on his beard remained unchanged from the day of his petirah [death].

However in the associated footnote (4) it mentions:

The earliest accounts of the reburial of the Vilna Gaon record that his skeleton was found intact (in contrast to the others re interred), not his body.

In other words — though Leiman makes no mention of this — the ArtScroll account is a complete and deliberate fabrication, and this includes its report of who is buried in the various graves, and who destroyed the Lithuanian Jewish cemeteries. They were of course not destroyed by the Communists but by the Nazis, who are rarely criticized in the Lithuanian accounts (the Lithuanians being great anti-communist Nazi collaborators). (The communists are perpetually despised by totalitarians such as Nazis, Roman Catholics and most Lithuanians — both Catholics and Jews. So too advocates of other non-totalitarian political systems, such as the systems of democracy and free enterprise used in the United States, France and England, for example, are despised by them.) The ArtScroll account was intentionally and fraudulently designed to be emotionally stirring and smacks of dishonesty. It undermines the belief in miracles which is at the core of the Torah. ...If a Jewish publication fabricates and circulates false miracles, relics and shrines (Roman-Catholic style) maybe the Torah also does the same?

The article also repeatedly refers to Avraham ben Avraham, the Ger Tzeddek who since the end of WWII seems always to be buried along with the Gaon wherever he is moved. Leiman writes for example...

The present ohel, erected in late 1956, contains seven graves, six of which have the original tombstone inscription at the head of the grave. The seventh grave is unmarked. We shall assume [why?] that the unmarked grave is that of Avraham ben Avraham, whose original grave was not accompanied by a tombstone inscription.

... yet he never mentions the well known fact that the Ger Tzeddek never really existed. His tomb and cult (that developed around the tomb) are a typical Roman-Catholic-like shrine/relic propaganda/fraud apparently originally established by a pair of Roman Catholic monks under the direct guidance of the Vatican (click here).

The article also refers very briefly to Rabbi Pinchas Teitz, the currently deceased founder of an influential Rabbinic dynasty and educational institution (where the minds of Jewish youth are molded) in Elizabeth NJ. It once again quotes ArtScroll as follows:

In 1962, Rabbi Pinchas M. Teitz, the distinguished rav of Elizabeth NJ, visited the new cemetery. He had no trouble finding the new grave site of the Gaon and those who had lain near him; an ohel marked the new site... Not far from the Gaon's ohel, Rabbi Teitz spotted four black spots in fairly close proximity. These, he was told, denoted the grave sites of....

Leiman then goes on to mention:

In this... account, the narrator goes on to describe how Rabbi Teitz raised the funds for... the erection of an appropriate monument at the new grave site.

But it remains uncertain if a single definitive real burial monument/shrine which contains the real remains (relics) of the real Gaon (or anyone else for that matter) was ever erected. Nor can we form any clear idea of how aware Teitz was of the fraudulent discrepancies while he was raising the funds and spotting the spots (he may have been fully aware). Or the trouble he took to investigate the discrepancies (rather than choose to conveniently believe whatever he was (supposedly?) told (by whom?)), so as to present a clear and honest picture to the donors and guarantee that their money was not being squandered or stolen.

Finally, Leiman offers his tentative theory (which does not fall too short of the other fabrications) of who is really buried in the shrine (Ohel) based on rubbings that were taken off some smashed tombstones that were found after the Nazi destruction of the Jewish Vilna cemeteries (which undoubtedly was carried out by the use of high tech explosives). Though Leiman warns:

The... tombstone inscriptions are clearly originals, though they have been re-inked erroneously and poorly, making them difficult to decipher. Add the flowery rabbinic Hebrew of 19th century tombstone inscriptions [and one can] never [really] read the inscriptions properly.

Binyomin Rabinowitz, on the other hand, in his 2005 article “Can Anything Be Done to Save The Remnants of Vilna's Old Jewish Cemetery?” (which is based on interviews with Yeshayah Epstein who lived in Vilna prior to WWII and has an intimate knowledge of the events) states:

It remains unclear in many cases whether the contents of the graves themselves were transferred or just the headstones. [Furthermore] a considerable number of... graves have disappeared without a trace [and] above the ground there is no indication of their presence.

By the way, Rabinowitz' article also indicates that the Gaon's tomb has again been moved by the Lithuanians (including the Jewish Municipal counsel and Lubavitcher representatives), this time to a collective grave which does not even have a collective monument. The article advocates the errection of a collective monument, since it would be impossible to really identify personal graves. It has long been Litvak custom to bury in layered graves and the real tomb of the Gaon (who was very disliked by the general Jewish community of Vilna at the time of his death and very few attended his funeral) was probably lost long ago — the fraudulent Gaon shrines started to appear in the late 19th century.

Leiman then concludes in the spirit of a sophisticated academic who seems to believe that truth is an infinite unatainable abyss, as follows:

In such [real] matters, however, one can never be certain. Nothing will delight me more than new evidence that will... provide an even more accurate account of who is buried in the Vilna Gaon's tomb.

... TO BE CONTINUED ...