The Little Girl's Question - R. Zecharia Wallerstein ZTL - TorahAnytime.com

But I was somewhere in a city and I was speaking in a bunch of schools, girl schools, and I got a phone call when I was there if I that in this city there was there was some deaths, parents that died from from cancer and from other things and there were there were there were you saw my sister were there were girls that lost their parents and they wanted me to give them a chizuk. So when I go to this lady's house and she's going to put a a group together, what do they call these groups? They um support group and the group's going to be for girls from the ages of 6 to 16. But I go give them chizuk. I'm like, I don't know. I never say no. I'm like, okay. What am I going to tell these kids? Each one of them lost either one or two parents. So what am I going to tell these kids? I'm going to tell them about Moshe Rabbeinu. Moshe Rabbeinu was abandoned, adopted, burnt his tongue and he became Moshe Rabbeinu. So all those things that happened to Moshe Rabbeinu were not his choices, that he was put into the Nile River, that he was adopted by Batya, that his tongue was burnt, but he ended up being prince of Egypt, right? And look what he did with it. Okay. So I have my speech ready. I'm going to give these kids chizuk. So I go in there and I thought there'd be seven or nine kids. There were over 25 kids. And there's a whole circle of chairs and I was sitting in the middle. Okay? It was very shocking for me. A lot of these kids were very very young, little ketselach, 6 years old and 9 years old. It was very shocking for me, but I can't show that to them. I'm going to give them chizuk. So I did my whole Moshe Rabbeinu routine and they really liked it. And the parents, you know, the single mothers and fathers, whoever lost lost a wife or a husband, they were there cuz they were a little nervous, you know, how are the kids going to take it? First time we did this. Okay. I finished my speech. I thought I did very well. No, I knew I did very well. Right? They were smiling. One little girl. I said, no. I finished my speech. I said, "Okay, any questions? Whoever wants to ask a question can ask a question." So there's one little girl says, "Could I ask you a question?" I'm like, "Sure. What's your name?" She tells me her name. "How old are you?" Nine. I'm like, "Okay. What's your question?" So she looks at me and she says, "Rabbi Wallerstein, when you were nine, did you have a mommy?" I said, "Yeah." She goes, "Oh." I'm like, "Why? Why are you getting so upset? You don't know my mother?" Like, why are you saying that, right? Then she looks at me and she says, "You still have a mommy?" I said, "Yes." She goes, "Oh, you really do? You still have a mommy?" I'm like, "Yeah, baruch Hashem. She should live long." She goes, "Oh, okay." She gets up, walks out. She just walks out. The next kid gets up, walks walks to the kitchen and then the three older girls that were sitting there get up, they leave. Within 10 minutes, 8 minutes, there wasn't one person in that room. I lost the whole crowd. I gave the best speech of my life. Did not mean nothing. Because at the end of the day what this girl was hoping would be that Rabbi Wallerstein is speaking to us must mean that he went through the same thing. And therefore she was hoping that when she said, "Did you have a mommy when you were nine?" I would say, "No." And then she would say, "Wow. So I could be a Rabbi Wallerstein." But he didn't say