Once, Rav Refoel visited Berditchev, where he was received with great honor and much fanfare. Afterward, he vanished. A search party looked for him and found him in the marketplace, encircled by a throng of lowly simpletons and merchants who were all laughing at the “batlan”, the good-for-nothing weirdo dressed oddly with a handkerchief over his head.
When they questioned his disappearance and odd behavior, Rav Refoel explained that he was distressed by the outpouring of honor; they had simply inflated his ego with too much kovod, and so he had tied his handkerchief over his head and entered a fabric store, asking to buy some snuff. The owner saw a simpleton and a stranger who was certainly acting oddly, and he poked fun at him, taking him from store to store in search of the fictitious snuff, while they all had a hearty laugh. “In this way, they belittled and mocked me,” explained Rav Refoel, “and I was spared all the honor!”
(Imrei Pinchas II p199)
