The Darchei Moshe in Hilchos Mezuzah

In his old age the Maharsham lay weak on his sickbed, and many talmidei chachamim came to visit. Rav Meir Shapira was among them. Outside his room, two of the visitors began to argue in low voices, so as not to disturb the Rav, about whether in our times there is still a mitzvah to give matnos kehunah, or whether it would look like pride, mechezi keyuhara.

Hearing the debate, the Maharsham asked Rav Meir what was being discussed. When he was told, he murmured that the Darchei Moshe in Hilchos Mezuzah answers this explicitly. The talmidim were alarmed. They thought that the illness, or old age, had clouded his mind, for what had matnos kehunah to do with the laws of mezuzah?

As they went on arguing, the Maharsham asked them again if they had looked in the sefer he had named. Finally one of them did, and to their great surprise they found a clear explanation just where he had said. Astounded by his sharp mind in a weakened body, they asked, "Rabbeinu, how can you remember all the tiny print of the commentaries on the Tur?"

"Look at what I wrote on the back cover of my own Tur," the Maharsham replied. They opened the sefer and found, in his own handwriting, that he had finished the Tur one hundred and one times. He had told no one. In another telling, he asked for his own Shulchan Aruch, and everyone saw that he had written in it the dates on which he began each cycle and on which he finished each review, four hundred in all.

The Yeshuos Moshe of Vizhnitz would draw a lesson from this. The Berzhoner Rav was not born a Berzhoner Rav, he said. His greatness came from review.