“The Kopycznitzer Rebbe once called my father over and said, ‘Please Yankel, I need you to lend me some money, the Ponevezher Rav is on his way here for a visit and I need some refreshments in his honor. I have to serve something, and I don’t have a penny left in the house.’
“My father,” Itche Meir reflects, “would tell us the story with awe. Not a penny. The Rebbe had literally given his away his last cent; he was unable to hold on to money if he could use it to help another Yid.”
(On that visit, Reb Yankel would recall with amusement, the Ponevezher Rov had commented, “If it was decreed on me in the Next World that I had to come back down to earth as a chassid, I would ask to be a Kopycznitzer chassid.” Rav Aharon Kotler considered himself a chossid of the Rebbe as well.)
