A Jewish teen holds a Torah scroll covered by an ornately decorated Torah mantle that commemorates those who perished in Nazi death camps during the Holocaust.
“This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Once again men and women of ripe old age will sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each of them with cane in hand because of their age.’” (Zechariah 8:4)
During the Holocaust, many Jewish children were deprived of a normal, happy childhood and celebrating their coming of age ceremonies — their Bar and Bat Mitzvahs.
“My parents were religious, but by the time I turned 13 [five years after they had been killed], I didn’t know I was supposed to be celebrating,” said Itzhak Reznik from Lithuania. “All I wanted to do was survive.” (Ynet)
Reznik was “left alone after my parents were murdered” and from Lithuania, entered the Soviet Union, where “we couldn’t leave until 1970” and where religion was eliminated.
Jewish children in Poland’s Warsaw Ghetto
To help correct this injustice, this past Monday, 50 Holocaust survivors participated in this Jewish “coming of age” ceremony at the Western Wall.
Just two days before Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), Reznik and a dozen other men danced with the Torah scroll at the end of the day’s Torah readings — their numbered tattoos hidden away for a moment with the covering of tallitot (prayer shawls) and tefillin (phylacteries).
These 13 men and 37 women never had the chance to live out the remainder of their childhood, instead they endured the Nazi Reich and the Holocaust.
One of the B’nei Mitzvah (Son of the Commandment) participants, Gal Moshe, 80, from Poland, told Times of Israel that, “The memorial prayer moved me particularly as I thought of my family, and especially of my mother. I literally cried.”
“When I found out I could do a bar mitzvah now, I wanted it a lot and I also asked my two grandsons to come with me. I was at their bar mitzvah and now they are at mine,” he said.
Their own children and grandchildren showered the survivors with sweets.
Reznik walked arm in arm with his grandson to the Western Wall, and overcome with emotion, said, “Am Israel chai (the people of Israel live).”
Thirty-seven women were also given the special honor of a Bat Mitzvah (a rite that originated in 1922) in a parallel ceremony in the women’s section of the Western Wall, partitioned from the men’s section by the mechitzah fence.
Jewish men and women pray in separate areas of the Western (Wailing) Wall in Jerusalem.
Other groups, including Amigour — Jewish Agency Housing Projects — and Aish have hosted Bar Mitzvah ceremonies for Holocaust survivors, in conjunction with the Western Wall Heritage Foundation.
Amigour provided a Bar Mitzvah ceremony to 20 of its elderly residents, a celebration attended by another 250 senior citizens.
Before the Amigour ceremony, the Bar Mitzvah candidates “visited the Western Wall Tunnels and Chain of Event Center, then the IDF soldiers saluted them and there was a ceremony at the Western Wall that included the laying of tefillin and being called up to the Torah,” the organization’s website states.
At the Aish Center across from the Western Wall, another 14 survivors from Tirat HaCarmel, near Haifa, had their own Bar Mitzvah ceremony and a festive meal to celebrate.
The Western Wall Heritage Foundation called the most recent ceremony “revenge against the Nazi oppressors, in the form of a return to Jewish tradition and proof that ‘it is never too late,’” according to The Jewish Voice.
