The man insisted that no, it probably wasn’t the same town, because no one important came from Rogatchov
One snowy evening, a retired fellow entered. He met Rabbi Avigdor Goldberger, the kollel’s director, and told him that although he knew he was Jewish, he didn’t know much beyond that, and had reached a stage in his life where he wanted to learn more. Rabbi Goldberger introduced him to the Rosh Kollel, who asked him where he came from. The elderly fellow shrugged.
“Rogatchov,” he said in an accented English that hinted at his Russian roots. “You probably never heard of it.”
“Rogatchov, as in the birthplace of Rav Yosef Rosen, the Rogatchover Goan?” asked Rav Gibber.
The man insisted that no, it probably wasn’t the same town, because no one important came from Rogatchov, a tiny, out-of-the-way town in Belarus. But instead, Rav Gibber took the fellow over to the seforim shrank and pulled out a Tzafnas Panei’ach, the Rogatchover’s sefer, where printed on the front page was “Rav Yosef Rosen, Rogatachov.”
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