Abraham ben Abraham
[4] There are several versions of this story, especially among the Jews of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, who know and still refer to Potocki as the Ger Tzedek ("righteous proselyte") of Vilna (Vilnius).
A rough translation: A few years ago, it happened in Vilna the capital of Lithuania that a great prince from the family of Pototska converted.
[7]In his lecture on the topic,[8] Prof. Sid Leiman quotes an author from a century ago who related the same reason - heard from a member of the Pototzki family.
Polish author Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, based on the story written in Hebrew from 1766 by Judah Hurwitz, Ammudei Beit Yehuda in Amsterdam relates that young Potocki and his friend Zaremba, who traveled from Poland to study in a seminary in Paris, became interested in an old Jew whom they found poring over a large volume when they entered his wine shop.
This Jew might have been their own countryman, Menahem Man ben Aryeh Löb of Visun, who was tortured and executed in Vilna at the age of seventy (3 July 1749).
Tradition has brought this Jewish martyr into close connection with the Ger Tzedek, but fear of the censor has prevented writers in Russia from saying anything explicit on the subject.
His teachings and explanations of the Old Testament, to which they, as Roman Catholics, were total strangers, so impressed them that they prevailed upon him to instruct them in the Hebrew language.
Potocki then fled from France and hid in a synagogue in Vilna, wearing a long beard and peyot like the Perushim (devout Jews who separated themselves from the community to learn and pray).
There a Jewish tailor who sewed uniforms for Polish bureaucrats overheard some clients talking about the fugitive divinity student and suspected that the stranger in the synagogue might be he.
[1] Potocki's parents visited him in prison and begged him to renounce his Judaism publicly, promising to build him a castle where he could practice the religion privately.
Potocki refused, preferring instead to die al kiddush Hashem and inquired of the Vilna Gaon which blessing he should make immediately before his death.
[1] Some sources say that Rabbi Alexander Ziskind, author of Yesod VeShoresh HaAvodah, stood near Potocki and said "Amen" to the blessing he said before he died.
There was also an unusual number of fires in Vilna, and a building that stood opposite the execution site bore a black stain from the "smoke and fumes of the burning".
Potocki's ashes were reinterred alongside the Vilna Gaon's grave,[1] and an inscribed stone memorial to him was mounted on the wall of the ohel.
According to Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, following Avraham ben Avraham's death, the Vilna Gaon believed that the spiritual constitution of the world had become altered in such a way that a Jew was no longer bound to wash his hands in the morning (netilat yadayim) within four amot (cubits) of his bed, as explicitly taught in the codes of Jewish law such as the Shulchan Aruch and other halachic works.
Teter mentioned that the story ("a carefully crafted tale of conversion") was likely created and developed as a "response to a number of challenges that the Polish Jewish community faced from the mid-eighteenth century".
[12] He notes that the literary version of the legend was created by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, a well-known Polish writer of the 19th century, author of numerous historical novels, who included the story about Potocki in the third volume of the history of Vilna (1841), Wilno od początków jego do roku 1750 (1840–1842),[12] in which he claims to have followed a Hebrew original, thought by some to be from Ammudei Beit Yehudah (Judah Hurwitz, Amsterdam 1766).
The story was then popularised through Russian translations, and there is evidence that a cult of Potocki's grave in Vilna has existed until the Jewish cemetery (at Pióromont also known as Snipiszki quarter) was destroyed by Nazis during World War II and later by the Soviets.
[12] Tazbir further notes that the Polish nobility was guaranteed the freedom of faith (by acts like Neminem captivabimus and the Warsaw Confederation), and capital punishment was extremely rare.
[12] It is worth noting that given that the story was quoted in a written account from 1755, by Rabbi Yaakov Emden (Vayakam Edus b'Yaakov, 1755, p. 25b), Tazbir's claim that the "legend" originated at the turn of the 19th century, is clearly false.
