Last week in shul, I was reading through Ateres Hashavua, a parsha sheet from the high school I went to (Ateres Yaakov), and right at the end, they printed the following inspirational story:
Before the Chazon Ish zt’l moved to Eretz Yisroel, he lived in Vilna, where Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzenski zt’l was the Rav and Dayan. When the Chazon Ish first moved into Vilna, Rav Chaim Ozer invited him to daven in his Shul, where the Chazon Ish received an aliyah. Rav Chaim Ozer noticed that before the Chazon Ish began to make the brachos on the Torah, he removed his glasses. Curious, Rav Chaim Ozer asked the Chazon Ish why he had removed his glasses. “Don’t you need them to see?” The Chazon Ish simply answered, “Yes, I do,” but did not explain why he had removed his glasses. It was only later that someone revealed that the Chazon Ish loved the Torah so much that he could not bear to have any physical barrier between himself and the Torah!All right, so the second paragraph is my addition. But at least the punch line makes more sense!
The next week, the Chazon Ish received an aliyah once again. Rav Chaim Ozer noticed that before the Chazon Ish began to make the brachos on the Torah, he removed all of his clothing. Curious, Rav Chaim Ozer asked the Chazon Ish why he had removed his all of his clothing. “Won’t you be cold?” The Chazon Ish simply answered, “Yes, I will,” but did not explain why he had removed his all of his clothing. It was only later that someone revealed that the Chazon Ish loved the Torah so much that he could not bear to have any physical barrier between himself and the Torah!
Note that it is not the Chazon Ish that revealed the "reason," nor does it account why specifically glasses, more than anything else he was wearing, were a physical barrier. Nor does it strike me as a particularly plausible explanation for the Chazon Ish's actions - begause of his great love for Torah, he removed the physical barrier, even though it would prevent him from seeing what thebaal koreh was reading!
My father suggested that perhaps the Chazon Ish's nose was feeling pinched by his glasses. My father-in-law suggested that perhaps his perscription was such that he needed to remove his glasses in order to read.
My intuition is that there was an halachic, rather than emotional, cause to the Chazon Ish's actions. In Brachot 25b (page 16b-17a in the Rif, on the Rif blog) we encounter the following:
Rava said: excrement through a glass {ashashit}, it is permitted to read Shema opposite it. erva through a glass, it is forbidden to read Shema opposite it.Thus, there are times that glass functions as a partition in terms of the laws of reading Shema. Perhaps the Chazon Ish felt that his glasses would be considered an halachic separation from actually seeing the Torah during his aliyah. Why not tell this to Rav Chaim Ozer? Perhaps he considered this a chumra he accepted upon himself as a middat chassidut, but did not want this to become normative law. (Or perhaps he did not want to go into extended halachic discussions bein gavra legavra, or so as not to hold up the tzibbur, etc.)
What is the reason? There {by excrement}, Dvarim 23:15:
erva}, it is written (Dvarim 23:15)
Indeed, such an explanation could perhaps be found in the words of whoever revealed the reason after the fact.
"It was only later that someone revealed that the Chazon Ish loved the Torah so much that he could not bear to have any physical barrier between himself and the Torah!"Perhaps at the root of this is that "the Chazon Ish
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Nowadays, of course, we have glasses that are more clearly a division. I mean, of course, the deliberately blurry glasses that some (few) are wearing, in order to block out non-tznius sights.
I would have thought to give the reason for his behavior having to do with תורה שבכתב אי אתה רשאי לאמרה בעל פה, and he held that wearing glasses is considered not reading it from the actual writing. (And although he wore his glasses all other times, maybe he relied on the Gra in others who in siman 48(?) hold that it's only when you're fulfilling others' obligations that you can't read by heart.)
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