Rav Eliezer Dovid Friedman, ztz'l, of London told the following illustrative stories and anecdotes regarding the Ahavas Yisrael:
The Tiferes Shlomo teaches that the rebbe, Reb Zisha of Anipoli would have a daily morning ritual. After reciting the blessing of birkas haTorah, he would go outside into the marketplace searching for Jews to bless with the bounty of the shefa which he had just found and harnessed from saying his own birkas haTorah. He would bless the first Jew he could find, no matter who he was!
Similarly, Rav Friedman relates, “I was on the bus in Givas Shmuel and I sat next to a Jew I knew from Grossvardein who unfortunately was not counted among the most religious. However, he had come from a Chassidic family and he was not ignorant of the value of a rebbe’s berachah. He told me how once he was passing by the holy tzaddik, the Ahavas Yisrael of Vizhnitz, when he was in Grossvardein and he went in for a berochah. After he left, the Ahavas Yisrael sent his shamosh after him. Surprised, he came back in. He was even more taken aback when the Ahavas Yisrael said to him, ‘Tit mir a toyva, un zayt matzliach – Do me a favor and you should succeed!’
‘You should know,’ he said to me, ‘that year, I had tremendous success in all my endeavors – whatever I did was successful.’”
Rav Friedman concluded, “The Ahavas Yisrael obviously sensed that it was an eis rotzon, an auspicious moment when his berochos could do and achieve – and he sought out the first Jew to bestow them upon, whoever that Jew was!”
