Simchas Torah & a Lost Minhag of the Gra By Eliezer Brodt Chol HaMoed Succos is the Yarzheit of the Vilna Gaon (for an earlier post on the Gra see here and here). In this post I hope to show a source for a “forgotten” Minhag of the Gra. 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), in an…
Women, Simchat Torah, and Censorship By: Eliezer BrodtA recent book, Mi-pehem, (Bnei Brak,2008), collects interviews that were conducted with various Gedolim. One interview was conducted with Rebbetzin Ginsburg the daughter of R. Yechezel Levenstein. In the course of this interview she described the Simchat Torah celebration at the Mir in Europe:אבל שמחת תורה בישיבה היה משהומיוחד. הנשים עמדו בפינת בית המדרש מאחורי מחיצה, ומחכות בהתרגשות לתחילתההקפות! (מפיהם, עמ’ 199). According to this interview, women in the Mir were behind the…
