“My son is in pain, and I want to show him that his pain is my pain”

The badeken concluded and I joined the chassan and his parents in the family room, pleased to have some quiet time with them.

I placed the ashes on the chassan’s forehead and encouraged his parents to bentsh their son before leading him down to the chuppah.

As they did, I waxed nostalgic.

Baruch had his bris in my shul 23 years ago.

He also celebrated his bar mitzvah in the shul.

As my mind wandered down memory lane, another event that happened ten years ago came to mind.

Baruch was the youngest in a family of five boys, and he wanted something special for his bar mitzvah. The seudas bo b’yom would be a small family gathering, and Baruch’s only request of his parents was that when he was called up to deliver his pshetl, his four older brothers would stand next to each other, hands outstretched, and he would dive into their hands. They would then proceed to “deliver” him to the shtender.

He had seen this shtick at the bar mitzvah of a friend and thought it was such a cool idea.

His parents agreed, and Baruch reminded his mother numerous times to tell the photographer to capture his grand entrance from all possible angles.

She did, and everything worked out just the way Baruch had dreamed.

A week later, the photographer sent the pictures. As Baruch and his mother scrolled through the file, they looked eagerly for the shots of Baruch and his brothers, to no avail. They were nowhere to be found.

Baruch’s mother reached out to the photographer, and many emails and phone calls later, he finally admitted that he didn’t have them. “I apologize,” he said. “The memory card with all the pictures of Baruch and his brothers was somehow corrupted and all of them are lost.”

Baruch was beside himself with sadness.

“There must be a way to get them back,” Baruch pleaded with his mother.

Feeling his pain, his mother came to see me and asked if she was allowed to summon the photographer to a din Torah.

“You might get monetary compensation,” I explained to her gently. “But  even a beis din cannot make missing pictures reappear.”

“I know that,” she said. “But my son is in pain, and I want to show him that his pain is my pain.”

Baruch’s mother took the highly unusual step of appearing alone with her 13-year-old son before a panel of three venerable dayanim to plead her case.

The next day, I asked her how it went.

She explained that the dayanim were sympathetic, but as I had told her, they had no magic patent for how to retrieve the pictures.

I looked at this mother, who had done everything in her power to help her son, going well beyond her comfort zone to appear before beis din, and shared what I felt.

“We know that today these pictures are important to Baruch,” I said. “However, perhaps years from now, he will never even look at them. But the unconditional and boundless love that you showed for your son will remain with him for life.”

Suddenly, my reverie was interrupted as the manager entered the room.

“The chuppah is starting,” he said.

“Wait,” said Baruch. “I need two more minutes.” Then he turned to his mother.

“Ma, I just want you to know that I never could have reached today without you. I’ll never forget that day you went to beis din to try and retrieve my pictures. The way you felt my pain was a lesson I will never forget. You taught me by example what true unconditional and boundless care and love really mean. It’s with that lesson of true love that I am building my new home.”

The manager knocked once more, and Baruch said, “Now we can all go to the chuppah together.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1091)