After davening, he seemed to simply wander about with no objective, empty day after empty day. However, anyone who paid serious attention caught him constantly secretly studying, so that he was truly a gaon. In fact, he made an annual siyum haShas on Bovli and Yerushalmi. Each day he learned seven blatt Gemora with the Mordechai besides his shiur Yerushalmi. This alone is a wonder – how he wasn’t noticed among people and how others failed to see his greatness and his learning that he managed to conceal. Some people saw him and came in close contact with him for a full decade, never knowing his name. One Jew who davened next to him for some forty years knew only the name by which he heard him called to the Torah: Reb Moshe ben Yitzchok Isaac; more than this remained unknown.
He seemed never to eat anything all week long besides to nosh on whatever food came into the shul and Bais Medrash at a l’chaim. Only one thing was noticeable: that on Shabbos and Yom Tov he drank a lot of wine at the seuda. He used to joke that no matter how much wine he drank it was veinig (Yiddish for “too little”; a play on words – the word vein means wine). Yet it never made him tired. Right after, he would go straight to the Bais Medrash to study until Mincha.
