After several of their children passed away, the parents of R. Menachem Tzvi Rivkin were given a silver earring by the Rebbe Maharash which he wore throughout his life. And when the Frierdiker Rebbe instructed him to wear an English top hat for his Manchester congregation, it saved his life.

R. Menachem Tzvi Rivkin (5629-5708) was a chossid of the Rebbe Rashab and the Frierdiker Rebbe. Born in Plisa, near Vilna, R. Menachem Tzvi was the son-in-law of R. Eliyahu Leib Itigina of Kublich, who was a son-in-law of the chossid R. Shlomo of Chashnik. He served as Rov of Babinovich, a town near Lubavitch, and World War I forced him to move to Vilna, where served as a Rov for Anash and founded the local branch of Tomchei Temimim.

In 5683, R. Menachem Tzvi was appointed as a Rov in Manchester, and he was a leading Chabad figure in England. Some of R. Menachem Tzvi’s chidushim are included in his father-in-law’s sefer Lev Eliyahu, and other material remains in manuscript.

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R. Menachem Tzvi’s parents had great trouble with children, as all of their previous children died when they were young. His father, R. Yechiel Nosson, travelled to the Rebbe Maharash for a bracha, and the Rebbe gave him a silver earring that he should place on the child’s ear as a segula. When the boy was born, they applied the earring to his right ear, and he wore it all his years as a Rov, until his passing at 79 years old.

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R. Yitzchok Dubov, who succeeded him in Manchester, described him:

Menachem Tzvi was incredibly fluent in Shas, in Navi (which he reviewed daily after davening), and he learned much Chassidus. He would daven at length with nigunim and tears from the depth of his heart, finishing at 2:00 PM every day, aside from Monday and Thursday when he sat on the Beis Din. He was particular to say the daily Tehillim with the minyan according to the instruction of the Frierdiker Rebbe, even though he personally was still before Shema (which he would recite in tefillin).

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When R. Menachem Tzvi took up the rabbonus in Manchester, England, the community leaders demanded that he replace his Russian kasket with the customary English top hat. He so despised the modern style that he considered leaving the position over the issue, but the Frierdiker Rebbe instructed him to wear the hat. Now that it was an instruction from the Rebbe, he kept the hat on his head whenever he could.

One day in 5701 (1941), during the Nazi Blitz on England, R. Menachem Tzvi sat at home learning, when a bomb hit his home, causing part of the building to collapse. The door frame of his room was blasted off the wall, and it landed on him. His hard top hat was crushed, but he was spared.

For sources, visit TheWeeklyFarbrengen.com