The photo of a professor at Jerusalem's Hebrew University holding a crying baby while delivering an impassioned lecture to his class has won the heart of the internet and now, he's even getting love letters.
According to a BuzzFeed post, professor Sydney Engelberg was conducting a lecture for his organisational behavior class when his student's baby suddenly started crying.
The mother had to take her child to class because there was no one available to babysit that day.
When the mother started to get up to leave with her crying baby, professor Engelberg took the baby from the mother and calmed it down, then continued with his lecture as if nothing was amiss.
"There's a lot of young moms and a lot of them have babies, and he encourages them to just bring their babies to class," Sarit Fishbaine, the professor's daughter said. The professor is so open about this rule that he also has no issue with his students breastfeeding in class.
"My dad just loves kids and loves babies, he has five grandchildren, so he just takes the baby. He's the one that's in motion, he's walking around the class. So he just takes the baby and continues teaching," she added.
The 67 year old Engelberg, who is a native of South Africa, has been teaching for the past 45 years. Fishbaine said that her dad is very understanding of his students as he teaches a masters degree program, with a lot of older students.
The picture was originally posted on Reddit with a brief background of the incident and pretty soon, it was picked up and shared by users of other social media platforms who unanimously praised the professor for his understanding of the real life dilemmas that mothers face. The photo has been shared 4,500 times on Facebook and received 2,200 comments on Reddit.
According to one Imgur user: "That man deserves a medal for accepting that real life happens, and mama needs her education."
His newfound popularity has only intrigued Engelberg as his daughter shared that he didn't get what the fuss was about.
His wife, Fredi Siskind Engelberg, shared that her husband has been getting love letters from his fans, as well as calls from various news agencies asking to feature him on television and radio.
"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," she said to Yahoo Parenting.
