Before he became revealed to the word, the Magid of Mezhritz zy”a was extremely poor. His wife would feed the family by hiring herself out to go to people’s homes and to kneed their dough for them. As payment, they would allow her to take one loaf of bread for her family.
One day, no one needed her services, and she had no bread. That day, their son, Rav Avrohom Hamalach zy”a, who was then a young boy, went to cheder with nothing to eat. When he came home, there still was no food in the house, and he went to bed with an empty stomach. The same thing occurred the next day, and the boy went another entire day with no food. That night, the Rebbitzen told the Magid that their son had not eaten anything in two days because she had nothing to feed him.
When the Magid heard this, his eyes filled with tears... At that time, a commotion broke out in Shomayim. Some angels said that the tzadik was right to cry, as the way of the world is that when someone hears that a Jewish child has not eaten in two days, he begins to cry. Others disagreed and said that the only reason he was crying was because it was his own son. They claimed that if it were someone else’s child, he would not have been so upset, which proved that he was crying over a matter of gashmius.
In Shomayim, it was decreed that he must be punished by being forced to reveal his greatness. When the ruling was revealed to him, he told the Rebbitzen, “Due to our sin, we lost what we had (our anonymity), but we shall have bread to eat.”
This was right after he had finished davening. He had already taken off his tefillin shel rosh and placed it in its case. As he removed his tefilim shel yad and placed it in its case, he found a coin sitting there. He declared, “This is the work of a miracle, and we cannot derive any benefit from it!”
He told his wife, however, that he had a coin stored away in the house that she didn’t know about. He told her to use that coin to buy bread for the child. And from then on, he became known in the world.
