R. Aaron Koidanover was a great jokester. He was once traveling and passed through Lida, a place with many maskilim [freethinkers]. One of the maskilim asked him, “What is it with you? You are also but a human being, what makes you deserving of so much honor?
R. Aaron replied to him: “Young man, there are three ways in which you and I differ:
1) You seek women, but women seek me.
2) You give women money, but women give money to me.
3) You promise women that they will not have children and in the end they do but I promise them [that they will] and they do.”
Abraham Perlov – a Koidanover grandchild – R. Aaron’s grandchild – does not believe that R. Aaron made such a “base joke” even though he knows that he was a great jokester.
I.F.
M. Ivenski
