Studying With Eliyahu HaNavi

It is related in Adas Tzaddikim that when the Rema became Av Beis Din of Cracow, he took Rav Chaim as his segan, and that when the Rema traveled, Rav Chaim acted as Av Beis Din in his place.

It happened that Rav Chaim’s wife passed away. The Rema depended so much on Rav Chaim, and the communal responsibilities were so great, that every shidduch suggestion for Rav Chaim was set aside. Everyone expected the Rema to approve some match. Rav Chaim, seeing how things were going, took matters into his own hands.

Tradition has it that he made a secret match through a shadchan with a local baker. The simple but pious baker supplied his illustrious son-in-law-to-be with all the seforim he would need, along with a hidden room where he could study undisturbed. One day the Rema returned to find Rav Chaim melancholy. He assumed it was for lack of a suitable match, and he proposed that he would indeed find Rav Chaim a new wife.

Rav Chaim pretended that he wished to visit his family and left with intentional fanfare. The Rema and the townspeople escorted him out of the city limits. There he dressed in simple clothes, gathered a minyan at the baker’s home, and married the baker’s daughter in a clandestine chuppah. After the wedding he set himself up in the room provided by his father-in-law and studied happily and undisturbed for some two years, until he was discovered.

A plague had struck Cracow, and someone assumed that the secretive baker’s son-in-law, whom no one knew, must be the culprit behind some crime that had brought guilt upon the city. Such was the desperate reasoning of people searching for the reason the plague had struck their city. Rav Chaim was summoned before the Rema, and it was found that he had been hiding all this time. He was released and cleared of all charges.

“Why did you hide; what was your sin? And why are you laughing?” the Rema asked, when he saw Rav Chaim laugh.

“I hid because the communal responsibilities were too much for me, and they disturbed my Torah study,” Rav Chaim explained. “I laughed because these simple people were so quick to judge me, and I can see they were all too happy to whip me as soon as you gave them the word. Apparently, my sin was that my Torah study was so good that I almost grew arrogant. But then Hashem put me in a situation where I would be shamed.”

The Rema went to visit him to see what he meant, and he overheard Rav Chaim studying with someone else. But when he came inside, Rav Chaim was alone.

“I command you to reveal who was here,” said the Rema.

Rav Chaim admitted that he had been studying with Eliyahu HaNavi. “And he is still here with us,” said Rav Chaim.

Eliyahu then told the Rema that he studied with Rav Chaim not because Rav Chaim was greater than the Rema, but because the Rema’s greatness and strength in Torah was too much for him, Eliyahu HaNavi.