A Month of Seclusion

The Gaon’s sons wrote of how far their father went in giving up even the love of his own children for the love of Torah. When their brother Sholom Zalman was five or six years old, he was the Gaon’s beloved only child at that time. He fell dangerously ill and was bedridden. Before the boy was out of danger, their father left Vilna to continue his practice of seclusion. The private quarters where he isolated himself were seven parsangs from Vilna.

He had the wagon readied and set off, and he spent a full month there, alone with Hashem and Torah. Only at the bathhouse, a place where it is forbidden to think words of Torah, did his mind turn to personal matters. On one such visit he counted that a full month had passed since he left his sick son, and he realized that he had no news of him. Overcome with love for his beloved son, he was jolted out of his hisbodedus (seclusion), and he at once ordered a coach to go home and find out how his child was.