Kikar Hashabat has an article about a a town called Kotzk where people flooded the doors of the rebbe's house asking for blessings and salvation. As his sister, was afflicted with various misfortunes, she approached the rebbe's house to ask him to pray for her. However, he left strict instructions with his gabbai not to open the gate for her.
She approached the gate and burst out crying, beseeching the rebbe to bless her. When she saw no one was coming to her aid, she turned to the heavens and cried out to G-d in prayer, asking that she shouldn't be abandoned, as even her brother wasn't in a hurry to help her.
She cried and cried and, at that moment, the rebbe stood up quickly and opened the gate.
"Come in," he told his sister. "You should know," he said, "that this gate was not locked but I saw that your heart was locked from praying for yourself. You should know that no prayer is comparable to the one uttered by the person himself. And I wanted you to personally arouse the mercy of Hashem.
Another article discusses the sale at a Sotheby's auction of an extremely rare prayer book which had belonged to the Baal Shem Tov.
The siddur, which was over 250 years old, was sold at a price of $572,500 to a private collector who bought it anonymously.
The prayer book contains some Jewish drawings and, on one of the pages of the Yom Kippur prayers, there is a tear stain.
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