While every day as a dealer in rare books and manuscripts has its share of excitement, occasionally there are extraordinary purchases, which cause even an experienced bookseller to get emotional. Recently, I had the opportunity to purchase one such manuscript, containing several pages handwritten by the great Vilna Gaon.
The Vilna Gaon’s writings survived in only a few scattered collections, and none were offered for sale publicly in over four decades, so the opportunity to be able to obtain something of the nature is literally once in a lifetime and captivated me ever since.
The original owner of the manuscript was Rabbi Shmuel Kleinerman, who had received it as an inheritance from his illustrate grandfather Rabbi Abraham Abba Kleinerman. Rabbi Shmuel was a student at the Chevron Yeshiva before the Second World War and he received this family heirloom in 1939 from his uncle Chaim Bagan who resided in Bialystok Poland.
His grandfather was responsible for much of the publishing of the works of Rabbi Eliyahu Kramer, the Gaon of Vilna, and was the owner of several manuscripts, among them autograph manuscripts of the Gaon. He had republished the Biur HaGra on the Yoreh De’ah section of Shulchan Aruch from the original autograph of the Gaon – thus we can conclude that he was well versed in the Gaon’s handwriting.
This manuscript was bought from the family of Rabbi Shemarya Zuckerman, whose wife was a descendant of the Gaon. The remaining manuscripts of the Gaon in the possession of Rabbi Abraham Abba were lost in the Bialystoker ghetto during the Holocaust.
This manuscript was published under the name Likutei HaGra in Jerusalem 1963. In the introduction, Shmuel states that the manuscript is an autograph of the Gaon for the following reasons: 1) “When my uncle (Chaim Bagan) sent me the manuscript, he noted that this is an autograph of the Gra among the other manuscripts in the family’s possession, and similar to the Commentary of the Gra on Shulchan Aruch both in the format and the handwriting.” 2) “Rabbi Joseph HaLevi, the son of Rabbi Naftali Hirtz HaLevi of Jaffe, wrote the following to me: ‘After I have seen the manuscript of the Gra in your possession, I can unequivocally declare this manuscript as an autograph of the Gra.’ (This was based with comparison of an autograph manuscript of the Gra in his possession – namely the Commentary of the Gra on Heichalos, which is clearly an autograph and confirmed by the Bet Din of Vilna.) Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer had relied on the expertise of Rabbi Joseph HaLevi and wrote an approbation confirming this fact.” 3) “After comparing the text of this manuscript and printed material from the Gra’s autographs, it is clearly that this manuscript is the source of the printed material as they are exactly one and the same.”
