Reb Mendel related:
‘When I was a child, we once had an important guest in our house - Reb Dovid Horodoker. In general, because of the poverty that was rampant then, we didn't have fleishig in the middle of the week. But in honor of the guest, my mother bought a chicken. She took the chicken to the shoichet, to be slaughtered. But, as chazal teach us בתר עניא אזלא עניותא (poverty continues to pursue the poor), and, sure enough, there was a shailah on the chicken. My mother took it to the Rov, who said it was okay.
When my father came home, my mother told him the whole story. My father said: "if Dovid is eating from the chicken, and there was a shailah, then he has to be asked the shailah." My mother brought him the shailah. He looked at it and immediately said: מען האט שוין געפרעגט א רב וואס האט דער רב געזאגט? כשר איז דאס! כשר ווער איז געווען דער רב? (I think he said the Rov was dubrawsky, not sure). And he followed the ruling of the Rov (he just needed to know who the Rov was)’.
There are a few lessons from the story. Rabbi Aronow always emphasized how he saw this ruach hakodesh with his own eyes (as a child), how Dovid Horodoker knew by looking at a chicken that a Rov already ruled on it!
A story he told me only recently (in the last few years):
“When I was a bochur, they once pulled me off the street, and brought me on a train (truck?). They were pulling young people, drafting them, to help out in various ways with the war effort. I was on a train with a bunch of young people, שקצים and שקצות, and the only thing on my mind was that I didn't have my tefillin with me (because I was pulled off the street) and how will I manage without tefillin. At the first opportunity I jumped off the moving vehicle (I didn't pay attention to the danger, neither the danger of jumping from a moving vehicle, not the consequence/punishment I might face for escaping, I only knew that I couldn't go without my tefillin). Boruch Hashem I got home safely. But none of the young teenagers who had been taken with me that day ever returned”.
A story he told a few times:
“As a child I had a good friend, Leizer Mishulovin. We had a break in the afternoon, and then we would return to Yeshiva. One afternoon, I was returning to yeshiva in the afternoon, and my friend Leizer Mishulovin called to me.
"Mendel", he exclaimed excitedly, "I just experienced a ness!" He explained: he had come home from yeshiva, for the afternoon break, and was very hungry. He went to the ice box, to see what was there to eat, and he found some 'cutletten' (burgers). He was about to eat one, hungrily, when he remembered that he was taught that if you want something very badly, then you shouldn't do it. Since he really desired the cutlets, he decided not the eat them.
A few moments later, his mother came home. "Leizer", she called to him worriedly, "I hope you didn't eat the cutlets from the ice box". An ice box was then considered a luxury, that only the relatively wealthier families possessed. Since they had one, their non-jewish neighbor (who didn't own one) asked her for permission to store some of his food there. The cutlets were his, and pure treif! This was the ness that he had experienced”!
Reb Zalman Moshe and Reb Dovid Horodoker were farbrenging together. In the middle, RZM asked RDH "Dovid, tell me the truth, do you have ahava veyirah." First, he tried to get out of it, but RZM would not relent, and finally picked up a bottle and warned "if you don't give me a straight answer, you're getting this bottle on your head!" So, left with no choice, RDH replied "ahava veyirah, nu, a mohl kitzelt zich".
The story is relatively known, but when Rabbi Aronow told the story, he described RZM and RDH as being "אויף דו". No one knew what "אויף דו" means (nor did anyone since to whom I repeated the story). So Reb Mendel explained: To an older person, deserving of respect, you have to address them as איהר. But 2 people who are equals, can address each other as "du". When we want to describe that these two chassidim were of similar age and stature, we describe them as being אויף דו.
