Chassidic Tales with Rav Shlomo Katz

On Tisha B'Av, the Rhuziner’s chassidim tried anything to escape the sadness, even setting a wild prank in the beis medrash. But when the rope accidentally hoisted the Rebbe himself, his response wasn’t anger....it was a tefillah.

What is Chassidic Tales with Rav Shlomo Katz?

Short, soul-stirring stories from across the flavors of Chassidus—Breslov, Chabad, Ger, and more. In just a few minutes, Rav Shlomo Katz brings the heart of Chassidus to life, one tale at a time.

The הייליגע ריז'ינער was so big on שמחה, on happiness, and so down on sadness. Whenever he spoke, he spoke about the importance and the life force that comes through a Jew when he's in a state of happiness. So on תשעה באב, his חסידים were losing their mind. They didn't know what to do with themselves, and they came up with all these different pranks to get through the day and try to mitigate all the sadness with some pranks, some שמחה.

So they had a great idea. They opened a skylight through the roof in the בית מדרש, and they somehow pulled down a rope which would then yank up, would wrap themselves around anyone that would walk into the שול, and it would wrap themselves around the person that walked in and they'd yank that person up, up towards the ceiling. And it just so happened that the problem was they couldn't see who was walking in, so they said the first person that's going to walk in here, they'll experience this. It was the ריז'ינער.

The רבי walked in. Suddenly a rope comes and grabs him from all four sides and starts yanking him up, but as he was coming up, they realized they pulled up the רבי. Frightened and terrified, they lowered the רבי, and they didn't know what he was going to say, but he turned to שמים, he turned to the heavens, and he said, do you see? None of us know what to do with this day. Just take it away from us.

Just take it away from us.