The Oil From Ropshitz

It is told that the Shinover Rebbe did not skip Tachanun on the yahrzeits of tzaddikim, and that he did not make a habit of visiting their graves. Yet every year he marked the yahrzeit of the Ropshitzer Rav, author of Zera Kodesh, and went to his tziyun, since to him he attributed his very survival.

The debt went back to the days when the family lived in Rudnik and Yechezkel Shraga was seven. His uncle, Rav Avigdor of Dukla, had finished a visit and settled into his carriage when he remembered something he had left behind. He asked the boy to fetch it. Yechezkel Shraga ran out eagerly, and a wagon heaped with timber came racing down the road and rolled over him. The doctors shook their heads, for the surgeon said the wheel had cut his liver in two.

Rav Avigdor raised his hands to Heaven and cried out that if he was meant to have a son, he would give that son up to spare the boy. Chassidim relate that Rav Avigdor was afterward blessed with daughters alone.

The Divrei Chaim ran his hands over his son's broken limbs, and the bones joined and straightened beneath his touch. But he feared for the injury within, and he sent a messenger to Rav Naftali of Ropshitz, who was his own Rebbe, requesting prayers. The Ropshitzer sent back more than prayers: a small container of untainted olive oil, to be massaged into the child. Soon the boy was well.

In his old age the Shinover would describe how he felt his bones mending and his organs settling back into place as the oil was rubbed in. Then he would sigh and ask where such holy oil could be found today.