Building the Beis Knesses in Belz

While the great shul in Belz was being built, Rav Sholom was constantly seen paging through a certain sefer of Kabbalah. One day the sefer disappeared, and the building work was halted until it was found again.

On another occasion the building stopped when Rav Sholom announced that he needed two rare seforim before the work could continue. It happened that a bookseller in town had exactly those seforim, and when they were handed to Rav Sholom, construction went on. Years later his son and successor, Rav Yehoshua, remarked that he had looked through those seforim and saw no connection between them and building a shul.