It was a hot summer day when a man came to Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach zt’l. He had traveled across the city to speak with him about something very serious.
His son had certain learning challenges, but had pushed himself for over a year to master his bar mitzvah haftara. He had worked at it slowly, carefully, one phrase at a time, and now, he knew it cold.
One day, an uncle came to visit, heard him, and quietly pulled the father aside. That year, parshas Re’eh fell on Machar Chodesh. He had prepared the wrong haftarah. What were they going to do?
Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach listened to the sensitive question and ruled, with the shoulders of a true gadol b’yisroel, that the boy could lein what he had prepared. He even noted that the haftarah happened to be one of the Shivah D’nechemta, the haftaros of consolation read after Tisha B’Av, and there was room to keep it in place, given the circumstances.
On that fateful Shabbos morning, the father walked into shul, and sitting there, in a shul that wasn’t his own, having walked across Yerushalayim in the summer heat from Shaarei Chesed to Givat Shaul, was Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach.
He had come in person, so that if anyone in that room opened his mouth to question why this boy was leining the wrong haftarah, there would be no question at all who was standing behind this family.
Rav Shlomo Zalman understood that this boy, and his family, needed more than his p’sak. The bachur would learn then, and always remember, that the possibility that he might stand up at his own bar mitzvah and be made to feel small, even for a moment, even by a single raised eyebrow in a crowd, was something worth the effort of the leader of the generation.
We spend a lot of time thinking about what we say to our kids. We think less about what they absorb without us saying anything at all. Sometimes it takes a walk in the heat, sometimes it just takes a smile, but our kids have to know 100% who’s got their back.
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 94.
