R. Moshe Dov Ber of Velizh was a chossid of the Tzemach Tzedek, and later of Kopust and the Rebbe Maharash. He lived in Velizh most of his life before becoming the rov of Lochvitch, Ukraine, in his later years. He was known for his rigorous avodas Hashem and refined character traits.

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Though he had met the Mitteler Rebbe, R. Moshe Dov was mostly a chossid of the Tzemach Tzedek, and then of the Maharil of Kopust and the Rebbe Maharash.

He was revered amongst chassidim for his broad knowledge of Chassidus, his avoda, and choice middos. He was a toiling “gehoreveter” chossid. He would often say, “If you want to earn, you need to toil (horeven).”

When speaking about fixing middos, he would say, “It is said that ‘one should rather skin a carcass in the marketplace than depend on the help of others.’ Corrupt middos are like a carcass. Don’t touch it with your hands. Just shake it off like you shake the mud off your shoe. But if you don’t do it yourself, you will come to ‘depend on the help of others’ – someone else is going to do it for you.”

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In Velizh, there was a melamed, R. Yisroel Dov, a maskil and oved, who would daven at length almost every day. During davening, he would cry and shake up whoever was listening.

R. Moshe Dov once told him, “I don’t understand what’s with you. You work hard in learning and davening, sing, clap and bang, and at the end, you’re at the same place where you were the day before. When we were younger, we would not move from our place until some inner change resulted from our davening.”