Jerusalem professor Sydney Engelberg is inspiring joy and praise from parents all over the world this week due to his simple yet revolutionary gesture: holding a baby. It wasn’t just any baby, mind you, but that of a student in his class, and he held him during class, while lecturing a roomful of students. Someone snapped a photo, and it’s quickly gone viral, making the 67-year-old Engelberg a total rock star in Israel, Russia, France, Brazil, and beyond.
STORY: What the Photos You Post of Your Family Say About You
“He’s gotten love letters,” the professor’s very amused wife, Fredi Siskind Engelberg, tells Yahoo Parenting, noting that he’s been getting nonstop calls from radio and TV stations. “He’s pretty blasé about it, and we just find it all very funny. I think it must have happened on a no-news day.”
But the millions of celebratory fans who have shared the photo on Facebook and Twitter would disagree, as they’ve lauded the father of four, grandfather of five, and 45-year teaching vet as something of a feminist hero. “It takes a village,” notes one woman on Facebook, lauding the professor for opting to “stand by their students who are mothers, and do what it takes so that they can study while raising families.” On Imgur, where the photo’s social buzz seems to have originated, one fan says, “This is a professor who truly cares about the education of his students. Seriously.”
STORY: Dad Supports Breastfeeding Wife in Head-Turning Photo
The situation unfolded when the baby of a student in Engelberg’s Hebrew University class — open to students’ kids by a matter of the professor’s policy — began to cry. Engelberg scooped him up into his arms to calm him, continuing on with his lecture on organizational management without missing a beat. Someone in class snapped a photo of him holding the boy, who was wearing blue footie pajamas covered in stars, and posted it to social media. The rest is history.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment