The noted speaker and storyteller Rav Sholom Schwadron lost his father when he was just seven years old. For the rest of his life, Rav Sholom always showed tremendous sensitivity to orphans.
When he was an older man, he gave a sefer to a nephew as a gift for his bar mitzvah. This nephew was also an orphan. Rav Sholom inscribed the sefer “kamocha kamoni—just like you are an orphan, I am an orphan.”
He never forgot the loneliness.
When he was a young man, Rabbi Paysach Krohn’s family used to host Rav Sholom when he was in America. The first time he visited after Rabbi Krohn’s father was niftar, the Krohn boys and their mother went to greet his ship.
Rav Sholom saw them running towards him and stopped in his tracks for a moment. He then started walking again, much slower.
When he caught sight of Mrs. Krohn, the widow of his beloved friend, he shook his head, sat down on a bench, and wept.
After a few moments, he looked up at the family as if to say something, but motioned helplessly that he could not talk. The man of a million words had none.
The tears on his face spoke instead, and the silence touched them. They knew he knew their pain.
Courtesy of Agudas Yisroel of America
