The Rav Who Lost His Sight

It is told that on a stormy winter day in 5593, a strange white light lit up Santov for a long moment, and then the smell of fire filled the air. Lightning had struck some buildings, including the home of the Shemen Rokeach, and in the confusion it was discovered that the rav could no longer see. The finest doctors tried and failed, and he remained blind until his last day.

Yet the shiurim went on almost unchanged. Only a close observer saw the difference. Before, the rav had read the Gemara and the Rishonim from a sefer. Now he recited them from memory, word for word, while his talmidim followed in the seforim open before them and could hardly believe it. If one of them stumbled over a line from the Rashba or the Shulchan Aruch, the rav corrected him.

His seforim did not stop either. He dictated new chiddushim and had his talmidim read back each sugya, and he would test and revise the text until it was ready for print. "As long as Hakadosh Baruch Hu keeps me alive," he would say, "I will stand like a loyal soldier at his post. And if He took away my sight, then the strength of my eyes has passed to my other senses, and I will serve Him with those."

Ten days after the rav's passing on the twenty-seventh of Shevat, the Chasam Sofer spoke at length in his hesped. He said that the ways of Hashem are hidden from us, as with poverty and wealth or sickness and health, but that he saw a reason for the blindness of the Gaon of Santov. A tzaddik rises higher all his life and nearly reaches the summit of holiness. Yet his body keeps him tied to the physical world and holds him back from the peak his soul longs for. Hashem therefore took the sight of this angel among us, loosening that last bond so that his soul could ascend free of the body. "Now that we have understood this," the Chasam Sofer concluded, "let us properly mourn the tzaddik who was taken from us."