Bostoner Rebbe Zt"l

Baruch Dayan HaEmet. The Bostoner Rebbe of Har Nof has passed away at age 88.

One interesting story about him:

My father Shlit"a once went to his synagogue for Shaharit one Shabbat morning and was invited by the Rebbe to a Kiddush/tish following davening.

My father was intrigued by the many customs that the Bostoner shul had that were very similar to the Sephardic practice, and my father inquired the Rebbe about them.
For example, they did Hakamat Sefer Torah - aka Hagbaha - before the reading as opposed to after the reading, they did not say the beracha for Hallel on Rosh Hodesh, their siddur had Lamnatei'ah and Shir LaMa'alot for Minha and Arvit respectively, and a few other practices that were similar to the Sepharadim.

My father suggested to the Rebbe that perhaps it was because with the name Horowitz, he is descended from the Shela"h Hakadosh, whose name was Horowitz, and who made Aliya to Eretz Yisrael, and picked up some of the minhagim of Eretz Yisrael from the Gurei Ha'ari.

The Bostoner Rebbe replied that that was not the reason. Rather, the reason is because his anscestor way back (apparently, in the late 14th century) came to the town of Horowitz in Bohemia and bought it out, and was therefore called "Ish Horowitz". However, this ancestor was originally from Spain and named Benveniste. (This Wikipedia article in Hebrew and this site in English seem to corroborate much of this, and add that their ancestry is traced to the Ba'al Hama'or, who lived in Spain.)

A Hasidic Rebbe with Sephardic ancestry has gone to the next world.

יהי זכרו ברוך