This story is written in the sefer Zekan Ahron.

Approximately four hundred years ago, the city of Ragusa was home to a small Jewish community of about twenty families. While their lives were relatively peaceful, the Jews were constantly aware of the rampant anti-Semitism of the era and strove to keep as low a profile as possible so as not to arouse the ire of their gentile neighbors.

Our story begins on the first day of Sukkos, when the Jews of Ragusa were sitting in their sukkahs for the festive yom tov meal. Word got out that the young daughter of Stefano, one of the most outspoken anti-Semites in Ragusa, was missing, and a search was quickly organized in order to find her.

Then came the good news, which spread from sukkah to sukkah, that little Maria had been found. The Jews heaved a sigh of relief, grateful that the incident had ended peacefully without any drama. Whenever the non-Jews were upset, their fury always spilled out onto the Jewish community, and the Jews were now grateful to have been spared a pogrom or worse.

But their relief was a little premature.

Just one hour later, they received word that the little girl had not yet been found, her whereabouts a complete mystery. The search continued in earnest as the Jews held their breaths, hoping and praying for Maria’s safe return into her father’s hands.

As the hours ticked by with no sign of the girl, the search team began to conduct house by house checks, thoroughly examining each home to find clues that would lead them to the little girl. With their inborn hatred of Jews, the Jewish families were the prime suspects, but searches of their homes turned up with nothing. The team then went on to search the gentile houses of the city, one at a time.

It was in the home of Eva, a surly gentile woman, that they discovered not just a clue, but the missing Maria herself. She had somehow stumbled into Eva’s evil clutches, where she was strangled to death. Her mangled body was located among the dust bunnies littering the underside of Eva’s bed.

Stefano was, understandably, furious, and he wanted nothing more than to see the wicked woman meet a similar end to that of his own poor daughter. Eva was immediately chained and led to the courthouse, where she was scheduled to undergo a prompt trial.

As they marched Eva to court, one of the gentiles whispered into her ear, “I know why you did it.”

The condemned woman looked at him in surprise and remained silent, not wanting to incriminate herself.

“You did it because the Jews put you up to it, didn’t they?” the man whispered. “They needed you to kill the girl in order to use her blood for their Passover cakes.”

Eva just continued to stare at him, shocked. Then the faintest flicker of a smile came to her lips as she realized the magnitude of his words. The Jews! She could blame the whole affair on the Jews and save her own skin!

Just minutes later, she was seated in the defendant’s stand, listening to the charges being read against her. When given the  opportunity to speak, she knew exactly what to say. “I did it because the Jews forced me to,” she declared, her chin pointed outwardly in defiance. “They needed gentile blood for their matzah, and they forced me to murder that poor child so that they would have blood.”

The judge looked at her, trying to gage the truth of her words from the expression on her face. It was much easier to take her words at face value and convict a Jew for the murder than to investigate the matter properly to determine her true motive. “Which Jew asked you to do it?” he wanted to know.

Eva thought quickly. She did not have too many dealings with Jews, and certainly did not know any by name. She racked her mind feverishly, trying to come up with a name, any name, to absolve herself of the grave accusation hanging over her head.

“You said you killed her because the Jews forced you,” the judge repeated. “Which Jew? Tell me his name.”

“Yitzchak Yeshuran,” Eva blurted out as she recalled the name of the Jewish peddler who often stopped by her house with his wares. As the name left her mouth, she was struck by the brilliance of it. She owed money to Yitzchak Yeshuran, money for goods that she had purchased from him and had never paid him for. And now, in one brilliant maneuver, she had ridden herself of both her crime and her debt. “Yitzchak Yeshuran was the one who made me do it.”

The judge ordered for Yitzchak to be brought to court, and he was pulled into the courtroom, vehemently denying his involvement in the affair. “I am innocent,” he declared over and over as he was dragged to the witness stand.

“You were the one who forced me to murder poor Maria,” Eva accused him. “It is because of you that a Christian child was killed.”

Yitzchak shook his head. “It has nothing to do with me,” he insisted. And then, in his desperation to prove his innocence, he made a vital mistake. He turned to the judge and pointed at Eva. “I never saw this woman in my life!”

But this was clearly a lie, since Yitzchak and Eva had business dealings together, and there were many eyewitnesses in the courtroom who were eager to testify to this fact. Yitzchak’s denial, when measured against his lie, did not sound believable.

The judge’s expression hardened, and in a grim voice he pronounced his verdict. “The Jew, Yitzchak Yeshuran, has been found guilty of instigating the murder of Maria, the daughter of Stefano. He will be tortured until he admits to his guilt, after which his suffering will be allowed to cease and he will be promptly executed.”

A pale Yitzchak was led off the stand to the torture chamber, where the vilest instruments awaited him. He closed his eyes, unable to bare the sight of the menacing tools, his lips moving in prayer.

“Confess the murder!” the guards yelled at him, lifting a large metal instrument with sharp spikes. “You will suffer until you confess!”

Yitzchak stubbornly remained silent, and the guards began plying their tools. He screamed in unbearable agony as his body was subjected to the most excruciating pain imaginable, but he still did not confess. The pain was impossible to bear, and his tortured shouts tore through the heavens, but he continued to remain steadfast and did not admit to involvement in the murder.

At last, the guards began to realized that a confession would not necessarily come before Yitzchak died from the torture. They moved on to another horrific method of torture, one that they knew would lead to his death.

A rope was tied around Yitzchak’s bleeding body, and he was lifted to the top of a tall pole. For fifteen minutes, they left him dangling mid-air, held to the pole by a cord that cut into his raw flesh. After letting him hover between life and death for what felt to him like eternity, the rope was cut and he plunged to the ground, to his death.

But he did not die. Somehow, Yitzchak’s broken body had survived the tremendous fall.

This did not perturb the guards; to the contrary, they were happy with the opportunity to cause the Jew some more suffering before he could feel their torture no longer. They lifted him from the floor and tied him again to the pole, where his broken bones shouted out in excruciating pain as he was forced to remain suspended mid-air, attached to the pole by his legs.

After fifteen forever minutes, the rope was cut and Yitzchak crashed to the floor, his knees bent instinctively inward to protect his stomach. He could barely lift his head or move his limbs, but the roaring pain that filled his head and ears and inflamed his entire body told him that he was very much alive.

By now, the guards were getting impatient. They were growing tired of torturing the Jew and wanted to be done with him already, but Yitzchak was still very much alive. Cursing in frustration, they bound the rope again and repeated the entire process all over from the beginning, but the results were the same. The rope was cut and Yitzchak tumbled to the floor, his breath shallow and painful, but he was still living.

This was unprecedented. It was not possible that someone could have survived such a fall three times, especially after having undergone such excruciating torture first.

“He must be practicing witchcraft, or some other form of magic,” the guards told one another as they dragged the poor Jew into a prison cell to await his fate while they went to report on the unexpected turn of events.

“If he’s a sorcerer, then we’ll only have power over him if we remove his hair from his head,” came the decision from the powers that be. “Remove his hair and drop him from the pole. He won’t be able to survive.”

With sadistic cruelty, the guards tore the hair from Yitzchak’s head, blade by agonizing blade. Then they tied him again to the top of the pole and dropped him down. He survived. They tried again, and he survived again. Seven times, they dropped the hairless Yitzchak Yeshuran from the top of a high pole, but he seemed to be immune to death.

He was brought to a jail cell, where he was kept in isolation for twenty days while the authorities tried to decide what to do with the man who simply would not die. His body was deformed and his spirits were low as he waited for the next stage of his torture. During those twenty days, he was given meals to ensure that he would not die of starvation while they discussed his fate.

After much deliberation, it was decided that the cause for Yitzchak’s miraculous survivals was the position of his knees during his falls. By bending his knees inward toward his torso, he had protected his vital organs from damage. The way to circumvent this would be to find a way to prevent him from bending his knees during the drop.

Two heavy beams of wood were nailed together to form a ‘v’ shape. Yitzchak’s body was placed on top of the wood, and his legs were tightly tied to the arms of the ‘v’. This made it impossible for him to move or bend his legs.

With the heavy wood in place, Yitzchak was again dropped from a tremendous height. This time, he could not move his legs, and the fall was much quicker thanks to the extra weight of the wood he was strapped to. He cried out hoarsely from pain as he crashed on the stone floor, but he did not die.

They tried again, but he still remained alive.

Yitzchak Yeshuran was led back to jail, in terrible pain, where he languished for another fifty days. During those fifty days of respite, he slowly began to regain his strength as his wounds healed and his bones began to knit themselves together again.

After fifty days, the authorities were ready to try again. They tied an adult ram, fully grown and quite heavy, to Yitzchak’s body, and raised them together to the top of the pole. They were certain that the weight of the sheep would bring Yitzchak down with tremendous force and finally kill him.

They were wrong. The ram died instantly upon making contact with the stone floor, but Yitzchak Yeshuran survived again.

Next, they tied a bigger animal to Yitzchak, one that weighed a few times the amount that he did. For a half hour, he dangled mid-air, connected to the animal, before the cord was cut and they plunged downward, the weight of the animal pulling Yitzchak down with force and speed. The animal died, but Yitzchak did not.

At this point, the authorities began to realize that something supernatural was at play. As hard as they tried to murder the Jew, he simply refused to die. Instead, they turned their attention to Eva, the woman who had incriminated Yitzchak. Perhaps she held the key to uncovering the mystery.

“Confess!” they demanded of her. “Tell us your true motive, or we will do to you what we did to Yitzchak Yeshuran.”

“I did it because Yitzchak told me to,” Eva insisted.

“We’ll see about that,” the guards told her grimly. They bound her to the top of the pole and let her dangle for fifteen minutes until her nerves were shot. Then they disconnected the rope and watched as she fell to the floor. Her screams stopped as she made contact with the cold stone, and upon closer inspection, it was discovered that she had died from the fall.

After her successful death, the guards decided to try again with Yitzchak, hoping they would have better luck. It was on the first day of Chanukah, and for the umpteenth time, Yitzchak was dropped from a tremendous height. Unsurprisingly, he survived the fall.

All throughout Yitzchak’s ordeal, the Jewish community of Ragusa rallied around him, pouring their hearts out to Hashem to save the innocent man. The story spread to the nearby cities, and the Jews there, too, began to intervene spiritually, storming the heavens on Yitzchak’s behalf.

A local rav, the Zekan Ahron, wrote a letter to an influential nobleman, begging him to step in and take pity on Yitzchak, who had been thrown to his death too many times to count. He also instructed his son to write the story down and spread it further. This resulted in more rabbanim getting involved in the story.

The Jews organized a twenty-four-hour learning campaign, ensuring that Torah would be learned in Ragusa around the clock in Yitzchak’s merit. People fasted and prayed nonstop for his salvation.

In the meantime, Yitzchak Yeshuran continued to languish in prison in an airless cell with a tiny window. He was extremely weak and his body was barely working. While he was provided with meals, he was too weak to feed himself and therefore could not eat.

The Jews, who were afraid to come close to the prison, hired a gentile to feed Yitzchak via a long spoon through the tiny window of his cell. Slowly, Yitzchak began to regain his strength, but he was still unable to perform the basic of functions.

Then a miracle happened. Somehow, a cat managed to enter his cell by way of the tiny window. It sat on Yitzchak’s hands and warmed them, it licked away the dirt and kept them clean, and miraculously, his hands began to heal. His wounds began to close and he began to regain function in his hands.

With his hands well on the way to recovery, the cat moved to another place on his body, providing warmth and healing. Gradually, as the cat devotedly sat on various parts of Yitzchak’s body, he began to come back to himself.

While Yitzchak was slowly healing in the privacy of his jail cell, something eerie began to occur in the gentile parts of the city. One after another, the authorities involved in Yitzchak’s conviction, imprisonment, and punishment began to die. First to go was the judge, who collapsed suddenly from heart failure. After him came those involved in Yitzchak’s failed execution and the witnesses who led to his conviction.

The wave of sudden deaths got so bad that the gentiles became afraid to keep Yitzchak in prison any longer lest they lose even more of their leaders. Yitzchak had already been imprisoned for two years and eight months, and had survived numerous attempts on his life. It was decided that he would finally be released from prison.

A huge crowd gathered outside the jailhouse on the day that Yitzchak was scheduled to be released. Everyone was curious to see the man who had dropped to his death so many times. Would he be able to walk? Would his body be twisted and deformed beyond recognition?

But when his cell was unlocked, Yitzchak Yeshuran walked out on his own two legs, healthy and whole and strong. The gentiles were shocked to find him in such an extraordinary state, and they realized that there was much that they did not know. It was clear that Hashem was on Yitzchak’s side, protecting him the entire time.

The Jewish community of Ragusa, understandably, celebrated with Yitzchak upon his release. They went to the shul to thank Hashem with Torah and tefillah, grateful that his horrific saga had finally come to an end.

The Zekan Ahron stood up to address the crowd. “Who saved Yitzchak Yeshuran?” he thundered. “Who gave him the strength to withstand the terrible torture he went through? How was he able to survive such a dangerous fall, time and time again? Who sent him the cat that helped heal his broken body?”

He looked around the room, at the expectant faces of the Jews of Ragusa and the glowing countenance of the newly-freed Yitzchak. “Hashem Himself saved Yitzchak Yeshuran! In the merit of his tefillos, in the merit of the Torah, the tefillos, the tears of the entire community, Yitzchak was miraculous saved.”

The Zekan Ahron printed this story in his sefer to commemorate forever the effectiveness of Torah and tefillah, in whose merit miracles occur.

Have a Wonderful Shabbos!

This story is taken from tape #TB64b