יעקב קופיל חסיד

Rav Yaakov Koppel Chassid (niftar 15 Elul 5547/1787), whose family carried the name Hager, was among the talmidim of the Baal Shem Tov and the father of Rav Menachem Mendel of Kosov, the Ahavat Shalom, from whom the Kosov dynasty descends and out of which Vizhnitz later branched. He was born in Kolomyia to Nechemiah Feivel, a merchant, who had come to the town from Chotyn and built it its shul, its beit midrash and its mikveh; his grandfather was Rav Yaakov Koppel Kamiel, of those driven out of Schnaittach in Germany, and his mother Perl was a sister of Rav Yom Tov Lipmann Heller, the Tosfot Yom Tov. He married Chaya, a daughter of his father’s brother Rav Zalman, who was son-in-law to a son of the Taz.

He never led a kehillah and never sat in rabbanut, but supported himself from a small shop whose goods he bought up at the fairs. Among those who knew him he passed for an ordinary man; the chassidim hold that the Baal Shem Tov saw in him a nistar. He came near to the ways of chassidut early on, met the Baal Shem Tov and became one of his close talmidim, and served as the fixed shaliach tzibur in the Besht’s beit midrash, his davening being sweet in his rebbe’s ears. Chassidic tradition has it that the Baal Shem Tov promised him that the kehillot of Maramures would one day stand under the rabbanut of his descendants.

Even the gentiles of his town called him the Shviti’nik, for he would pass his hand over his eyes at any hour, in the middle of trading no less, and say the pasuk in Tehillim, shiviti Hashem l’negdi tamid. His last years were spent in Tysmenytsia, where chassidut spread through his labors and where he stood up for the honor of Rav Meshullam Igra in a dispute that broke out between him and the townspeople; there he was niftar, on 15 Elul. Besides Rav Menachem Mendel of Kosov, his children were Rav Yitzchak of Kolomyia and Bluma, the wife of Rav Yitzchak, av beit din of Vizhnitz, and afterward the wife of Rav Uri of Strelisk.