Youth and Education
Legend has it that by the age of three he had committed the Tanach to memory. At the age of seven he was taught Talmud by Moses Margalit, rabbi of Kėdainiai and the author of a commentary to the Jerusalem Talmud, entitled "Pnei Moshe". The young Elijah was said to have already known several of the tractates by heart. He is well known for having possessed an eidetic memory. By eight, he was studying astronomy during his free time. From the age of ten he continued his studies without the aid of a teacher, and by the age of eleven he had committed the entire Talmud to memory.
When he reached a more mature age, Elijah decided to go into "exile" and he wandered in various parts of Europe including Poland and Germany, as was the custom of the pious of the time. By the time he was twenty years old, rabbis were submitting their most difficult halakhic problems to him. Scholars, Jewish and non-Jewish, sought his insights into mathematics and astronomy. He returned to his native town in 1748, having by then acquired considerable renown.
Read more about this topic: Vilna Gaon
Famous quotes containing the words youth and/or education:
“When a god is once beguiled
By beauty of a mortal child,
And by her radiant youth delighted,
He is not fooled, but warily knoweth
His love shall never be requited.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A woman might claim to retain some of the child’s faculties, although very limited and defused, simply because she has not been encouraged to learn methods of thought and develop a disciplined mind. As long as education remains largely induction ignorance will retain these advantages over learning and it is time that women impudently put them to work.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)