Rav Nochum Cohen’s resonant baritone booms a greeting across the salon of the unpretentious Geula apartment where he raised his 19 children. The tall Sadigura chassid with the long gray beard, piercing gaze, and youthful zest that belies his 81 years seats his guests at the large table.

There is constant activity in the home — he takes several phone calls during the course of the conversation — but the atmosphere is calm, not frenetic. He answers each call cheerfully and engages warmly.

One caller says his child is in the hospital with an infection. Rav Cohen bentshes him heartily for a refuah sheleimah min haShamayim.

Chaim Brieger, a Lakewood businessman who plans Rav Cohen’s trips to America, looks on in awe.

“He picks up every phone call,” Reb Chaim says. “He gets calls from people all day long, in desperate straits, with overwhelming troubles, begging for yeshuos. He can get 50 calls an hour. How can one person handle it?”

Rav Cohen himself is pretty matter-of-fact about the help he dispenses, and he disclaims any special talent.

“Baruch Hashem, I’m able to help a lot of people, people who are broken and are looking to HaKadosh Baruch Hu for help,” he says. “Hashem gives me the koach to be mechazeik them — but believe me, it’s not my own power. From where would I know how to answer a question on a shidduch?”

“It’s not magic,” Chaim Brieger qualifies while Rav Cohen takes another call. “But he’s a tzaddik. And he’s been around tzaddikim. And he’s a baal chesed. There are so many Yiddishe kochos in him.”

And those Yiddishe kochos have a provenance. Descended from Reb Leibele Zlatopoler, a talmid of the Baal Shem Tov, Rav Cohen is the fifth generation of his family to live in Eretz Yisrael. His ancestors — chassidim of the Baal Shem Tov, then of the Maggid of Mezritch, and then of Rebbe Yisrael of Ruzhin — first arrived in Tzfas, with succeeding doros moving to Chevron, then Jerusalem’s Old City, then to Katamon when the Old City was overrun by the Jordanian Legion in 1948 (during that time, Reb Nochum’s father was held captive in Jordan for nine months). The family is able to trace its lineage to the Kohanim of the Second Beis Hamikdash, ben achar ben.

Rav Cohen himself was born in Jerusalem and is blessed with hundreds of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. His father, Rabbi Leibel Cohen, was a chassid of the Abir Yaakov of Sadigura, Rav Avraham Yaakov Friedman, who first advised Reb Nochum — recent recipient of the prestigious Yakir Yerushalayim prize for exemplary citizenry and chesed — to dispense brachos to the public.

That happened when Rav Cohen was a newlywed kollel yungerman, some six decades ago. In those days, Reb Nochum would take the bus to the outlying new neighborhood of Kiryat Menachem to deliver a shiur at a local shul between Minchah and Maariv. One night after the shiur, a boy from the shul asked to ride back to town with him. During the trip, the boy unburdened his soul about his father’s chillul Shabbos and angry remonstrations at the boy’s pleas to keep mitzvos.

Reb Nochum’s thoughtful advice to the boy — to be as respectful and obedient as possible — ended up turning the father’s heart to Torah observance. When other Kiryat Menachem residents heard of this, they began bringing their problems to him as well. Soon Rav Cohen’s reputation as a baal eitzah spread far beyond the small suburb, and people from all over starting coming to him.

“He was a humble man and not accustomed to that kind of treatment,” says Dr. Meir Wikler, a psychotherapist and family counselor with offices in Lakewood and Brooklyn, and longtime follower of Rav Cohen from the Rav’s early fundraising forays to the US. “He went to his rebbe, the Abir Yaakov of Sadigura, and told him, ‘These people should be coming to you.’

“But the Rebbe answered him, ‘I’m in Tel Aviv, and more than enough people are coming to me. If you can help people in Yerushalayiim, let them come to you.’

“Then,” says Dr. Wikler, “the floodgates opened.”

Rav Nochum Cohen shares the plights of the people with Lakewood businessman Chaim Brieger and Mishpacha’s reporter. For decades, this table has seen dozens of broken souls every night

“I’ll Help You” Rav Cohen, for his part, is careful not to let our conversation become too focused on him and deftly steers it back to his memories of rabbanim.

“The Abir Yaakov once told me that in all his days, a word of falsehood never left his mouth,” Rav Cohen says reverently. “He always sat ramrod straight, never even resting back against a seat. His thoughts were always pure, and he knew kol haTorah kulah.”

In his own days, Rav Cohen crossed paths with many other legendary figures. He frequented the court of the Rebbe of Husiatyn, a great-grandson of the Ruzhiner Rebbe; he traveled to America to be with the old Boyaner Rebbe for all of Tishrei, and he once had a 15-minute yechidus with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who encouraged him to utilize his kochos by giving shiurim all around the city. Early on, the Baba Sali blessed him that his brachos would come to fruition, and Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv once told him he must always continue in this avodah, “because for this you were created.” He is also a longtime friend of Rav Yitzchak Dovid Grossman and many years ago helped him get his chinuch and chesed operation in Migdal Emek off the ground.

After receiving his rebbe’s imprimatur, Rav Cohen soon had up to 100 people a night coming to his humble Geula abode — people broken in spirit or in dire financial straits. And it turns out that Rav Cohen’s ownership of the apartment is also linked to the Abir Yaakov of Sadigura.

“I was with the Abir Yaakov on Hoshana Rabbah 5721 [1960],” Reb Nochum recounts. “He told me to tell my mother that he thought I was ready to hear suggestions for shidduchim.”

The Rebbe’s brachah immediately bore fruit — Reb Nochum became a chassan on Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan.

“I came to the tish on Gimmel Cheshvan [the yahrtzeit of Rav Yisrael of Ruzhin]. The Rebbe told me mazel tov. I said to the Rebbe that my father didn’t know where he would get the money to make the chasunah.

“The Rebbe answered, ‘However I can help, I will.’ ”

Unfortunately, the Abir Yaakov was niftar two months later, on 5 Teves. Somehow the family made the wedding and even found an apartment. Through arduous scrimping, saving, and collecting, they managed to scrape together 500 lirot for a down payment to secure the apartment for the couple. However, to complete the purchase, they would need to come up with an additional 2,000 lirot — an astronomical sum — within two months. Reb Nochum’s father, Rabbi Leibel Cohen, was distraught.

“I told my father, ‘Tatte, the Rebbe promised he would help you. You should go to Nachalas Yitzchak [the cemetery near Tel Aviv where the Abir Yaakov is buried] and remind him of his promise.”

So Reb Leibel did just that.

“The following morning after davening, he boarded a bus to Tel Aviv, and there he boarded a local bus to Givatayim, to the cemetery,” says Rav Cohen. “He davened fervently at the kever, then returned to Yerushalayim and came to Minchah at Batei Orenstein.

“After Minchah, a Sadigura chassid named Reb Moshe Meitz called my father over. ‘Leibele, kim du. This afternoon I fell asleep, and the Rebbe came to me in a dream. He said to me, “Reb Moishe, in a drawer you have 2,000 fund [Yiddish for lirot]. Give it to Leibele.”’

“Reb Moshe woke up in a fright and told his wife, ‘The Rebbe came to me in a dream!’ He went and opened the drawer, and there was the money.

“Nu,” says Reb Nochum, “the Rebbe promised he would help, and he did.”

That story is also found in Dr. Meir Wikler’s book about Rav Cohen, titled 180 Rechov Yaffo: 50 Stories of Emunah and Bitachon (Menucha, 2014).

“It’s true, such books are not generally written about people who are still alive,” Dr. Wikler muses. “But I always feel a pang of regret when I read books or articles about gedolim who were niftar, about how warm and caring they were. I did it as a service to inform people to go to him for eitzos and brachos. He’s not inaccessible, and you don’t need protektzia to get in to see him.”

Dr. Wikler, who first met Rav Cohen 35 years ago, has investigated the source of Rav Cohen’s merit in dispensing effective brachos and advice: “He feels his zechus was having very choshuve rebbeim. He relies on bitachon and doesn’t second-guess himself. He lets the Eibeshter speak through his mouth, relying on HaKadosh Baruch Hu to give him the right words to say. He says it’s not ruach hakodesh but siyata d’Shmaya.”

Yet he clarifies that not every one of Rav Cohen’s brachos comes to fruition. “He happens to have an extraordinary track record. A very high percentage of the time, his brachos are mekuyam. Not all, but so many are, and they happen in the time and way he says they will.”

Yitzchok Ginsburg gives a hint of insight into what that siyata d’Shmaya entails.

“I once heard him giving advice to a girl who had come to him in Boro Park,” he says. “Almost out of nowhere, he told her that she needed to treat her mother with more respect — not answer her mother back or say things that were not nice. I asked him afterward what prompted him to say that. Did he get some kind of clue from her that she mistreated her mother? He said, ‘I have no idea. Hashem puts these things into my mind to say.’ ”

Dr. Meir Wikler with his rebbe and mentor. “I wrote the book as a service to inform people to go to Reb Nochum for eitzos and brachos. He’s very accessible — you don’t need protektzia to get in to see him”

Buy the House

Brooklyn-based therapist and author Rabbi Yaakov Salomon — who, as it happens, was the one who introduced his friend Dr. Wikler to Rav Cohen — recounts the story of a brachah he received that required more bitachon than he then had in stock.

“We had a growing family, and we had a very small house,” Rabbi Salomon says. “We had to move, and I didn’t have much money at all. I found a house that we wanted, much bigger, but I was having trouble selling my house — plenty of lookers, but no buyers. If I didn’t sell my small house, I couldn’t buy the big house — and I was afraid someone else would buy it and I would lose it.”

Rabbi Salomon met with Rav Cohen and explained his dilemma.

“He grabbed my hand and looked into my eyes with that deep, charismatic gaze of his, and he said, ‘The Ribbono shel Olam wants to see your bitachon. You have to buy the new house before you sell the old house.’

“I said, ‘Reb Nochum, this is hundreds of thousands of dollars. I can’t do it.’

“He said, ‘But that’s what the Ribbono shel Olam wants! You’ll see that when you buy the new house, that’s when you’ll sell the old house. It’s the opposite of what you think!’

“I just said, ‘Reb Nochum, ich ken nisht. I’m not on that madreigah.’

“He looked at me and he said, ‘Nu, nu. If you can’t, you can’t.’

“This was in January. He said, ‘Don’t worry, before Purim, you’ll sell the house, even if you can’t buy the new one. I’m giving you a brachah.’ ”

As his house had already been on the market for a long time, Rabbi Salomon eagerly accepted that brachah — but Purim came and went, and it was still unsold. He was beginning to think the brachah hadn’t “worked.” But then, the day after Purim, the eventual buyer showed up.

“He missed it by two days,” Rabbi Salomon says with a laugh.

Yitzchok Ginsburg relates the story of another of Rav Cohen’s brachos that was on target — but perhaps not quite the way he intended.

“One time Reb Nochum was at the Kosel, I think on Taanis Esther,” Reb Yitzchok says. “There was someone there who didn’t have children yet. Reb Nochum said to him, ‘Let’s say this kapitel together.’ Afterward, Reb Nochum said to him, ‘Okay, im yirtzeh Hashem, next year, a ben zachar.’

“And this person answers, ‘I’m okay with a girl also.’

“Rav Nochum laughs and tells him, ‘Now you’ve ruined it.’

“Sure enough, a year later, Reb Nochum is walking on Shabbos morning and sees this man, who calls to him, ‘Reb Nochum, I’m making a kiddush! I had a baby girl!’

“And Reb Nochum smiles and tells him, ‘I told you!’ ”

Reb Yitzchok says he’s seen Rav Cohen’s brachos achieve their best success when they’re accepted and acted on immediately.

“Reb Nochum will meet a boy,” he says, “and then an hour or a day later he’ll meet a girl and say, ‘This girl is for that boy.’ ”

That was the case for Moshe Majeski. The real estate and investment professional has known Rav Cohen for more than two decades and is ever grateful to him for making his shidduch.

“I went to see him 22 years ago on one of his visits to America and got a brachah for a shidduch,” he recounts. “And then later, a kallah went to get a brachah from him on her wedding day, escorted by her cousin. Reb Nochum said to the cousin, ‘I have a shidduch for you.’ He insisted that we meet that night. And baruch Hashem, the rest, as they say, is history.”

The story has gained some renown among Moshe Majeski’s friends. “People ask me all the time, ‘Is he a miracle worker?’ I say to them, ‘If he was able to give me the zechus of my wife, who is literally the biggest tzadeikes I know — it’s 22 years later, baruch Hashem, and the best day of my life was the day I met her — then yes, I guess he does make miracles happen.’ ”

Gamliel Beyda of Lakewood was part of a group who’d invited Rav Cohen to dine with them at Jerusalem’s Entrecote restaurant last year. During the meal, an American woman approached their table with a young man in tow and addressed Rav Cohen.

“She was really struggling with her Hebrew, but she told him that 25 years ago, she had come to his house on a very hot day, and he offered her watermelon,” Beyda relates. “After she refreshed herself, she then asked him for a brachah for a child. And now she introduced the young man with her and said, ‘Here is the son I had that year.’ ”

Reb Nochum giving off his infectious positive vibe in a happy moment with the previous Sadigura Rebbe ztz”l. Both family connections go back to Rebbe Yisrael of Ruzhin

He Wants Something

Occasionally when someone asks him for help, Rav Cohen finds that what come to mind are not words of blessing but words of inquiry. He tells of a Bnei Brak couple who came to him after many years of marriage with no children.

He asked the wife where she learned in school, and then asked her if she ever laughed at a teacher. It emerged that there was such a teacher, who suffered from this girl’s chutzpah.

“I told her to go to that teacher and beg forgiveness,” Reb Nochum says.

The wife managed to locate her old morah, long since retired. When she knocked on the door, the morah answered and remembered her former student. The years had not dulled the pain. The morah said she was not ready to forgive her student. The young woman went home crestfallen.

“The next time, she brought her husband with her, and the two of them cried to the morah, begging forgiveness,” says Rav Cohen. “This time the morah relented and forgave her. Within the year, she had a baby.

“Im ro’eh adam sheyissurim ba’im alav, yefashfesh b’maasav,” says Rav Cohen, quoting Chazal. “HaKadosh Baruch Hu doesn’t just send stam yissurim. He wants something. So talk to Him, figure out what He wants.”

And then there are times when Heaven decrees troubles upon a person for no discernible reason. Moshe Majeski recounts how, as a 19-year-old bochur, he was a caregiver for Rabbi Leizor Rosen, an elderly Belzer chassid and Holocaust survivor in Denver known to be a generous baal tzedakah. Childless and bereft of his wife Irma years before, Rabbi Rosen had gone blind and needed round-the-clock assistance.

Moshe accompanied Rabbi Rosen on a trip to Jerusalem to help him write out checks to various causes. Among the visitors to their hotel room was Rav Nochum Cohen. It was Moshe’s first time meeting him. Rabbi Rosen and Rav Cohen spoke for a while.

“At the end,” Moshe recounts, “Rav Leizor said to him, ‘Can the Rav give me a brachah that I be able to see again?’ Reb Nochum was quiet. Rav Leizor asked him again, and Reb Nochum was still quiet. Then Rav Leizor said, ‘I’ll tell my gabbai to write any check you want.’ Reb Nochum stayed quiet. And then Rav Leizor said to him, ‘A hundred thousand dollars, right now!’ Reb Nochum was quiet.

“Then Reb Nochum said to him, ‘I give you a brachah that the remainder of your years should be happy and healthy. But seeing again, I can’t do.’ ”

Rabbi Rosen nevertheless gave Rav Cohen a “very, very nice” donation. Then Rabbi Rosen turned to Moshe.

“He said to me, ‘This man is always the same. I can never push him. Other people, they say what I want to hear. Not Rav Cohen. And don’t get me wrong, he’s not a quiet man! But he won’t just say the things I want to hear.’ ”

The famed power of his brachos has been Rav Cohen’s main drawing card for the world at large. But those who have really gotten close to him over the years point to other qualities that attracted them.

“What brought me to him was mostly his charisma,” says Rabbi Yaakov Salomon. “I had never met anyone with that kind of charisma. He was — and is still — absolutely fearless. And he has tremendous simchas hachayim and ahavas Yisrael. I would say, in those four qualities, he ranks at the top for all of them.”

“If he’s in your home for a couple of days, it will change your life,” says Yitzchok Ginsburg. “I don’t know anyone who lives the way he lives — it’s the most positive vibe possible, based on emunah and bitachon in Hashem and simchas hachayim. He literally gets out of bed in the morning and starts thanking Hashem.

“After davening, he’ll say to me, ‘Yitzchok, you heard what happened? I woke up this morning, I felt good, I got out of bed and was able to walk!’ And he really means it. This is the way he goes about life.”

And by all accounts, Rav Cohen has been successful in imparting this outlook to succeeding generations in his family. Moshe Majeski relates some profound parenting advice Reb Nochum gave him.

“One time, I asked Reb Nochum about his secret to raising children,” Moshe says. “And he said, ‘Being happy, showing them simchah, and showing them that everything always comes from Hashem.’

“And then he continued. ‘The secret to being happy is helping others. And the secret of knowing that everything comes from Hashem is that He puts other people in need in front of you so you can help them.’ ”

That help can take many forms. Sometimes it’s just offering a listening ear.

Chaim Brieger recounts a visit last year by Rav Cohen to Deal, New Jersey, that ended with a stop at a local restaurant for a bite to eat. Not long after they got there, Rav Cohen spotted a soul at sea: The manager was sitting alone in back, looking glum.

“When we went to go wash, Reb Nochum said to the manager, ‘You look like you’re going through a hard time, like you lost a lot of money.’

“The manager said, ‘Yes, exactly. How did you know that?’

“Reb Nochum picked up that this guy needed chizuk. So he started giving him encouragement and reassurance and told him where he could do things better — ‘Make sure to be nice to your wife.’

“We ate and were about to bentsh. But Reb Nochum says, ‘Wait, I have to go back. I have to give this man more help.’ He waved me off and went to talk to him in private. I asked him later what that was all about, and he said, ‘This is our tafkid, this is what we’re here for. We have to help as many Yidden as we can, as much as we can.’ ”

Payback Time

Perhaps some of Rav Cohen’s sensitivity could be traced to inborn traits, but his life circumstances have certainly played a significant role in fine-tuning his chesed antennae.

Rav Cohen tells the famous story of the time a son of the Chofetz Chaim came upon his father crying. When the son asked him what was wrong, the Chofetz Chaim answered, “What will be? I don’t have any bizyonos [humiliation]. You have no idea how much bizyonos help Above.”

“I will tell you that bizyonos don’t only help Above,” says Rav Cohen. “They also help down here. I can tell you this because I’ve had plenty of them in my life. And they’ve all helped me, up until this very day.”

He recounts an incident from when a son of his was in shidduchim. Rav Cohen was at a large sheva brachos, with about 200 guests eating and drinking.

“But not one of them sang,” Rav Cohen says. “So I stood up and started singing. Someone came up to me and yelled, ‘Sit down! You’re not the baal habayis here!’ I didn’t answer him back, I didn’t say anything. And yet, what had I done? I was just trying to make the baalei simchah happy.”

Rav Cohen sat back down and waited for an opportune moment to slip out. The shame burned in him until that Shabbos, after the Friday night seudah, when his family had gone to sleep and the house was quiet.

“I sat looking at the 21 Shabbos licht, still lit,” he says. “I said to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, ‘Eibeshter, I want a reward for the bushah I suffered at the sheva brachos. I need to find a shidduch for my dear son. I don’t know where it will come from, but You can help me. I want the first phone call we get after Shabbos to be his zivug.’ ”

The phone was quiet after Shabbos, until it rang on Sunday afternoon. His wife answered.

“It was the shadchan, saying he had the match for our son,” Rav Cohen says, his voice ringing out in joy. “Today they have 17 children.”

Everyone who tries to do good in the world will go through humiliations,” Rav Cohen declares.

The embarrassment can take many forms — not just shame incurred from being publicly berated. Rav Cohen also went through acute poverty growing up in Jerusalem.

“We were aniyim, evyonim,” he says. “On Shabbos, my father didn’t give me from the Kiddush wine because he didn’t have any.”

Chaim Brieger tells of walking home with Rav Cohen after davening at Geula’s Har Tzvi shul one day. Outside his home, Rav Cohen opened his mailbox to find a bill from the local makolet for 3,700 shekels. He brought the bill inside and handed it to his daughter, who was visiting from Haifa.

“He says, ‘Tzipoyreh, du,’ and then brings a bundle of money to her, and says, ‘Go pay the bill,’ ” Reb Chaim recalls. “Then he tells me, ‘The makolet down the street sends me this almanah’s bill every month. She buys groceries, people give me money, I pay her bill.’ ”

Here Reb Nochum interjects, revealing what is perhaps one of his trade secrets.

“What is the reason that doing chesed with an almanah brings so much good?” he asks. “She has, by nature, a broken heart, and as Dovid Hamelech says, ‘Lev nishbar v’nidkeh, Elokim lo sivzeh.’ When she speaks to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, she is broken. But when you help an almanah and make her happy… now HaKadosh Baruch Hu is asking, ‘Who made you happy?’

“In that zechus, the person who helped her can request something from Hashem,” he says. “This person brought joy to the almanah. And that brought joy to HaKadosh Baruch Hu.”

He spreads his arms expansively. “Everything in the world is here to bring nachas ruach to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Money is nothing. But what you can do with money is unbelievable.”

Another sphere where Rav Cohen has extended himself is convincing recalcitrant husbands to give gittin. Rabbi Yaakov Salomon says he has proven “very adept” at this.

“This is an unusual skill that very few people possess,” Rabbi Salomon says. “Agunos started approaching him to help them. He would never turn them down, and he often succeeded. How did he do it? I think the husbands could not resist his persuasiveness and his genuineness and his simchas hachayim. He helped so many people that way.”

Rav Cohen’s success in that arena made him an address for people with problems that were seemingly unsolvable.

“If you have a big problem, you go to Reb Nochum,” says Rabbi Salomon. “He never says no. He never says to give up or not to try. He always says that it can be done.”

Moshe Majeski relates how he once arranged for a large donation to Reb Nochum just before Succos one year. Rav Cohen thanked him, but asked for more.

“I found out about a group of yesomim in the neighborhood who don’t have anything to do on Chol Hamoed,” he told Moshe. “So I’m taking them all on trips. And if we’re already going, they have to have nice clothes. If we’re doing the mitzvah, we’re going to do it right.”

The Shaliach

It is clear Rav Cohen has a long running tab of zechusim in Shamayim. He relates an episode from when he was a young kollel avreich, learning in the Mir and Yeshivas Ruzhin, raising his then 13 children in a one-room apartment. Between the two kollelim, he was supposed to be receiving 90 lirot (about $30) a month — but payment was, let’s say, not always regular.

He was learning the sefer Ohr HaChaim at home with a chavrusa on a Thursday night when a neighbor knocked on his door. The man said he had six children and no way to make Shabbos.

“That day, my kollel had given me 50 lirot. So I gave it to him,” says Rav Cohen. “My chavrusa shouted at me, ‘You gave him the 50 lirot? What will you do this month?’

“I said to him, ‘Why do you think he asked me and not you? This person left here happy.’ And we continued to learn.”

The next day, on Erev Shabbos after Minchah, Rav Cohen’s Thursday night chavrusa approached him before Kabbalas Shabbos.

“He said to me, ‘You did a great thing. Why do I say that? Because today my water heater broke. I had to bring a plumber to fix it. What do you think it cost me? Fifty lirot.’ ”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 959)