I just stood there, crying, in front of 100 guests. I kept trying to speak, but I couldn’t do it

Rav Gav Friedman

Popular lecturer, and teacher about Judaism and life for almost 20 years. “Some say I’m funny, some say deep, but none say boring.”

Jerusalem

I’m not usually speechless, though there are times that I know there’s nothing to say. Like this past summer when I was in Dollarama in Cote-St-Luc (a suburb of Montreal), and an older man came over to me and asked, “Where was G-d during the Holocaust?”

I had what to say, but knew he wasn’t ready to hear it.

Speechless, though?

That was only at my son’s bris, 12 years ago.

Nine days earlier, my wife, who was in the ninth month of pregnancy with our third child, realized she wasn’t feeling any movement. We rushed to the hospital for monitoring and were relieved to be told everything was fine.

The next day, we came back to the hospital because my wife had started labor. Things were progressing normally, until suddenly, the monitor started beeping crazily. The baby’s heart rate had dropped to 25.