Commemoration and conflict: the observance of the Vilna Gaon's 200th birthday

ENThe Jewish Community of Vilna first organized public events to pay tribute to its most famous son, Rabbi Elijah, the Gaon, on the occasion of his 200th birthday - in 1920. Although Rabbi Elijah was frequently invoked throughout the 19th century as the spiritual father and cultural hero of yerushalayim de-lita (the Jerusalem of Lithuania), earlier centennial anniversaries of his birth and death passed quietly, with little fanfare. At the time of the Gaon's 100th birthday, in 1820, East European Jews had not yet adopted the Western practice of observing the birthdays of important historical figures. In traditional Jewish religious culture, great individuals were recalled at the time of their yortsayt (the anniversary of their death), not on their birthday. And no particular significance was traditionally attributed to round numbered years, such as the 50th or 100th yortsayt. Nonetheless, by the time the 100th anniversary of the Gaon's death rolled along, in 1897, modern historical consciousness had spread among East European Jews, as had Western notions of historical commemoration. To mark the occasion, the Vilna book dealer Mordechai Katzenellbogen reissued the well-known portrait of the Gaon, seated against the backdrop of his library with a pen in hand, on a commercial basis, and sold thousands of copies.The Hebrew writer and educator Zalman Epstein, urged in the Hebrew weekly Ha-Melitz that the anniversary be marked by "collecting all the tales and legends of the Gaon, and compiling all the information in the possession of the elderly generation, so as to compose a comprehensive and systematic biography of this great man". He proposed that the v/ardens of the Vilna community announce a competition, with a prize for the best biography of the Gaon [p. 179-180].