Q&A: Does the Rabbi Believe the Stories About the Vilna Gaon
Does the Rabbi Believe the Stories About the Vilna Gaon
Question
There are stories about the Vilna Gaon saying that he used to sleep half an hour at night several times over, that he counted the minutes in which he “neglected Torah study” and it came to a bit more than 3 hours a year, that his sister came to visit him and he did not want to see her and said they would see each other in the World to Come, and so on and so on.
Does the Rabbi believe these stories? And if not—what are they? Just somebody’s inventions? Why invent things like that?
Answer
My attitude toward stories like these is: respect them, but be suspicious. Most of them are probably not true, but they don’t tell stories like that about me or about you (see here at the beginning of p. 5).
Discussion on Answer
From the standpoint of the commandment of Torah study, it probably really does pay to sleep as little as possible. But from the standpoint of understanding and knowing the Torah, it is not at all clear that, overall, it is better to sleep less. The Vilna Gaon’s achievements remain what they are whether he slept a lot or a little.
I, for example, in the atmosphere of stories about great scholars, grew up with the feeling that one should sleep as little as possible. Only at the university did I meet people with achievements I greatly admired, and they told me they slept quite a lot. One exceptional person told me she slept 9 hours. 9 hours! It sounded crazy to me. But her achievements spoke for themselves, and she had apparently learned from experience that this was how she maximized her cumulative productivity.
* Page 6.