A Young Boy's Torah

It is told that when the Imrei Noam was only six, his father brought him before the holy Ropshitzer Rav, who asked him why we eat kugel on Shabbos. In the blink of an eye the bright boy answered that the letters of the word kugel are the first letters of the words of the pasuk "Vehu kezera gad lavan" (Shemos 16:31): vov, kaf, gimmel and lamed. We eat kugel on Shabbos, he said, to remember the Mon (a custom noted in Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim, Hilchos Shabbos).

When he was eleven, his father took him to the Ziditchover Rebbe, the Ateres Tzvi, and the boy sat beside his father at the tisch. After the Rebbe finished saying Torah, he turned to the boy and said, "He grabs the words of Torah from my mouth as I say them." Rav Yitzchok Stutchiner explained that Rav Hirschele Ziditchover meant that when the Imrei Noam grew up, he too would say Torah in a style and manner similar to the Ziditchover's.