Tag Archives: bar mitzvah

August 14, 2023 · 6:58 am

Bar Mitzvah

by Perri Weinberg Schenker (Cincinnati, OH)

Like Moses, you stand poised to ascend,

wrapped up in the tassels of your courage and your fear.

Man-child, my child.

Child of God, child of green grass,

of ocean waves and snowflakes,

of flames that never consume.

Surely you know—surely—

that today you will leave behind

the spindly legs and tender leaves

that propelled you here.

Before this crowd of sinners and supplicants,

you will shed that skin, and rise.

Will the mountain expand you,

braid your soft sinew into knots?

What will you learn from the pebbles beneath your feet?

Man-child, my child,

Child of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,

square your shoulders

so they can bear the heavy stones.

Plant your foot into rock, foot into rock,

finding the rhythm, 

finding the crevices where secret knowledge hides.

Wedge yourself a foothold

in the footsteps of your fathers,

and climb

—away from me.

Perri Weinberg Schenker is a writer and editor in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she focuses on academic publications, textbooks, medical manuscripts, and marketing communications. She has always been a closeted poet, and “Bar Mitzvah” is her coming-out poem. Perhaps she’ll share more in the future—who knows?

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May 1, 2023 · 6:30 am

My Bar Mitzvah Story

by Jack Braverman   (Sarasota, FL)

This was the day that I was to become a man. It was the day of my bar mitzvah. I could only wonder about all of this. I was the smallest of boys, and I knew that in all ways I was just a little kid. 

Everyone was rushing. My mother, Lisle, and my father, Nachman,  were getting dressed in their very best. My sister, Marilyn, was yelling something about nylons. Her fiancée, Stanley, was coming to pick her up in a little while so they could go out together for breakfast before going to Temple.  

I said the brucha that I had been taught and pulled my tzit tzit up over my head. I put on a new stiff white shirt and clumsily tied my tie into a giant knot. This made the tie too short, so I tried again, and this time the knot came out lopsided, but the tie was the right length. I put on the new suit my mother had bought me from the tailor at the dry-cleaning store. It was my very first suit made too big so I could grow into it and made of thick, stiff, scratchy wool that made me feel itchy all over. I could wear it to my sister’s and brother’s engagement parties and their summer weddings so it wouldn’t be a waste.  

I looked in the mirror and tried to smile. Sometimes I wondered if I was normal. Other kids laughed and smiled. I just couldn’t seem to smile. I didn’t know what it felt like to be happy. I usually felt just sort of numb. My parents had often told me how hard their lives had been as children. They had been new immigrants so it had been a struggle for their family just to survive. They often went hungry, were often cold, and some of their brothers and sisters just weren’t strong enough and had died as young children. My father had to leave school in the third grade to sell newspapers in the streets of Montreal. He had learned then how to fight for the best street corners, how to jump onto a speeding trolley to sell some papers and then to jump between the cars onto the next trolley that passed before the conductors could collect a fare. The school of “hard knocks,” my father had called it.  

So my father taught me what he himself had learned as a child in order to survive—how to fight with your fists and how to knock someone out before they knocked you out, how to be tough and take a punch and never ever show pain or weakness, how to be a man. So I learned how to be tough. I challenged the other boys to hit me in the stomach and trained myself to take any punch they could give. I never flinched, never showed pain, never cried. But no matter how hard I tried, I never seemed to be as strong or as tough as my father wanted me to be. My mother taught me what she had learned as a child—how to account for every penny, how to work tirelessly without stopping from before dawn to well after dark, to never to give up, to hold my feelings deep inside and never let them show. I was a good student. I learned what my parents taught me. 

My parents moved often so I had to go to a variety of different Hebrew Schools. I never much liked Hebrew School. When I lived in Far Rockaway and Brighton Beach, I had to ride my bike to get there, so it was easy to just get lost along the way. Then I would weave my bike slowly back and forth across the whole width of some back road, leaning hard into the turns, feeling the edge, feeling the slow hypnotic rhythm as I rode one curve into another, feeling the bike as it felt the road. Sometimes I made it to school, sometimes I didn’t. 

When my family moved to Flatbush in Brooklyn, I was within walking distance to Hebrew School, so I couldn’t use my bike to get there. There was a collapsed building right next door to the school, and there I could spend the hours I was supposed to be in school. Jumping off the edge of one broken wall to another, playing at being an adventurer who could find my footing on the edge of any precipice, leaping out over broken glass and steel shards from one ruined wall to another, improvising more and more difficult jumps—allowing my feet to feel the strength and shape of the broken brick, trusting my senses to gauge the jump and then jumping beyond what I had ever done before, testing my courage, challenging myself to climb higher and jump further, trusting my feet to find their own footing. There was a feeling of danger, and I reveled in it because it made me feel alive. 

The Hebrew School teachers in Brooklyn weren’t kind when boys missed class or disobeyed. They taught as they themselves had been taught. Brutalized when they were children, these teachers taught brutality along with the Hebrew alphabet. They walked the aisles striking each desk with a thick wooden pointer as they passed, seeking out the boys who looked away or showed fear for they knew that these were the boys who were not prepared. There was an edginess, a feeling of danger, in the classroom as they called on one boy after another, waiting to catch one unprepared or not paying attention. When they caught one, they would humiliate him, embarrass him, scrape their wooden pointer across their knuckles or slap it across their backs. Sometimes they smashed the pointers across a desk, and the loud crack of wood splintering always managed to command attention. I read well, so the teachers rarely called on me. I made up a game of making the teachers believe I was asleep, resting my head on my books or mindlessly staring out the windows, knowing I was baiting the teachers, knowing that if I lost my place as I played the game I would be shamed or hit or thrown out. I knew it was risky, but it was the very risk that made it fun. 

Occasionally, some of the biggest boys, who were bigger even than the teachers, answered back. It was then that little Rabbi Menachim, who wasn’t much taller than 5 feet, would be called in. Rabbi Menachim was the toughest teacher in the school. No matter how big they were, Rabbi Menachim just grabbed these boys by their collar, lifted them right up out of their seats, and threw them down the stairs. Rabbi Menachim became my bar mitzvah teacher, and after throwing one boy out of school Rabbi Menachim confided in me that when he himself was a boy of just fifteen, he had disobeyed his father by cutting his hair short to be like the other kids. His father had thrown him down the stairs and out of his house. Then Rabbi Menachim’s father sat shiva for seven days as if his son were dead and never did speak to him again.  

The rabbi told me that though the bruises from being thrown down the stairs went away in a few days, the pain of hearing his own father say the prayer for the dead for him —the pain of looking into his father’s eyes while his father looked right through him as if he weren’t there—that pain was with him still. The personal confidences that Rabbi Menachim shared with me created a special bond between us, and I worked very hard to please the rabbi.  

Rabbi Menachim made it very clear to all of his students that if they could not or would not sing in the very fast, precise, restrained, somewhat stilted way that he taught, they would be bar mitzvahed anyway. They would sit up on the bima, but they would sit there like fools, shamed and embarrassed in front of all of their friends and family because they would  sit up there in front of everyone and say nothing. He insisted on the form of the cantillation being perfect—every word sung in an even controlled tone, no part louder or softer, no part faster or slower.  

I worked as hard as I could at being the perfect student for Rabbi Menachim. I did just as I was told, and the rabbi gave me more and more to chant and finally gave me the Torah portion itself to chant. I sang every note perfectly and distinctly just as I was taught, even though the stiffness and the flatness made the words sound dead—without spirit or heart or melody. 

The chanting that Rabbi Menachim taught sounded nothing like the cantorial music that my father listened to at home. My father would sit at home in the evening listening to old scratchy recordings of the great cantors of Europe and America—Moishe Kousevitsky, Rosenblatt, Serota. These were the cantors from a lost age, my father would tell me. These were cantors who had found a poetry, a natural harmony, in the Torah. They sang with a mesmerizing rhythm, an intensity, an anguish, a cry in their voices that drew me in. My father called these cantors chazans—those who could sing with a feeling in their voices that came from somewhere beyond themselves. They gave a voice to the pain, the loss, the loneliness and the hopes of generations of Jews. The chazans, my father told me, were those who could recreate the ancient haunting melodies hidden deep within the Torah. 

I heard that same music over and over for years growing up. My father would sit in a chair listening, crying quietly as he listened, revealing an emotion that I didn’t know my father had. My father and I didn’t talk much but since my father always seemed pleased when I sat down and just listened, I sat with him often. He told me that these chazans“sang from the heart” and “that was why their singing was so powerful.”  

“Singing from the heart, touches the heart,” he would say. 

Sometimes when I was sure no one was around, I played those old records, listening carefully to the anguished chant of those chazans. I even found a recording of my own Torah portion and sang along and joined in with the  recording, singing in the loudest voice that I could, filling the room with my voice, releasing something inside that was almost dead. 

My sister, Marilyn, came in to see me before she left with her fiancé for breakfast. She retied my tie, tucked in my shirt, which was half out, kissed me on the cheek, and gave me a hug. 

I sat up on the bima waiting to get up to sing my portion. It was the Akedah, the story of Abraham preparing to sacrifice his own son, Isaac. God himself had had to intervene to stop the sacrifice. This was the Abraham whom God had told to lech lecha, to leave his father’s house, to leave everything he had known, and go to himself. What a strange idea, I thought.  To reach beyond everything he had known by going to himself, to reach into  himself in order to go beyond himself. Is this what I’m doing now, I wondered?

I felt even smaller than usual sitting up there alone, vulnerable in front of all those people. I swung my feet back and forth while I waited to be called. I could hear Rabbi Menachim’s instructions in my head. I could still hear the pain in the rabbi’s voice when the rabbi had told the story about his father saying the prayer for the dead for him. 

I felt confused. Didn’t Rabbi Menachim’s own father sacrifice his son just for cutting his hair? Didn’t Rabbi Menachim himself sacrifice some of the bar mitzvah boys just because they couldn’t sing perfectly? In my mind, I could hear the cries and the hypnotic chanting of the chazans. I could hear the rhythms of the poetry in the Torah, the mesmerizing passion. As I sat perched high up on the bima, I remembered my father sitting in the living room crying as he listened to the chazans chanting.  

I wanted to please Rabbi Menachim. I wanted so desperately to finally please my father. I wanted to express the pounding, throbbing emotions that I felt. I wanted to stand up and scream out, “Here I am. I am a person. I have feelings too!” I wanted so much for my father just to notice me, to express some emotion towards me, to approve of something. I wanted to step out of the deadened, crushing life that I lived, unfeeling, numbed. 

Was this a dream?  A dream where I couldn’t feel? A dream where sad old men had taken over a religion and forgotten their heart and their spirit, where a son became dead to his father because he had cut his hair, where a father could cry for long dead cantors while ignoring his own living son sitting right in front of him?

I heard my name called in Hebrew. I stepped up onto a stool so I could see over the podium. Standing on the edge of that stool, I felt I was standing at the edge of the world, on the edge of everything I had ever known, and I could see a soft void in front of me waiting for me to fill it. All those faces in front of me.  

Something was tearing at me inside. My head was throbbing. Thoughts and memories were crowding within me, pushing against each other, trying to get out. There was a pounding in my ears. My skin was hot. There was a cry pushing its way out of me: the anguish of Rabbi Menachim, my father’s tears, my own long buried ache pulsing and pounding within me. I was sweating. I could smell my own fear. I tried to control all these feelings that were exploding within me. I tried to hold myself together. 

I could hear the words of my portion — “Heneni: here I am” —screaming in my head.  I am a human being. I am someone, too. I won’t be crushed. I will be…….

An ancient haunting wail filled the synagogue echoing back from the rear walls. An ancient rhythm seemed to call out to each of the listeners, speaking to each of them in their own name, drawing them in with a passion and a cry that seemed to know each one’s secret pain. The usual constant murmuring in the synagogue was silenced. The passions of the chazans was still alive. A song from the heart touched many hearts that day. I  looked up to see my father embarrassed, wiping away some tears before anyone noticed. 

At the end, when I walked off the bima, I tried to catch the eye of Rabbi Menachim, but the rabbi stood there stone-faced. At first the rabbi seemed to turn away. But when he turned back toward me, he looked right through me, as if I wasn’t there. My father ran up to me, his face still wet, and, proud father that he was, he picked me up and held me up high like a trophy. 

Rabbi Menachim and I never spoke again. 

Jack Braverman was born and raised in “the old country,” better known as Brooklyn, New York. He dabbles in swimming, sailing, kayaking, photography, and writing short stories.

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December 12, 2022 · 6:00 am

The Rebbe’s Blessing

by Steve Meltz (Clifton, NJ)

It was a 98° Tuesday night in the summer of 1974 when my mother parked her green Ford Pinto along Eastern Parkway at the corner of Kingston Ave in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.  

My mother, brother, sister and I were headed to 770 Eastern Parkway, the world headquarters of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson (of blessed memory) with whom we were about to have a one-on-one meeting called a Yachidus (Yiddish for “At one with”).   

This was arranged by a friend of my brother Dan’s named Yossie who he had befriended at a religious summer Camp we had both attended in the Catskills called Gan Israel. The camp was run by the Lubavitch (also known as Chabad) who are a Brooklyn-based Chassidic group whose leader we were about to meet.          

Dan had casually mentioned to Yossie, that I was unable to have my bar mitzvah in our own synagogue. I was 12 at the time and had also met Yossie at Gan Israel and was taken by how kind, gentle and genuine a person he was and at summer’s end we said our goodbyes.   

What I did not know at the time was that he was from one of the most prominent families within the Lubavitch community and had arranged for this meeting, a great honor. Normally one would have to wait over three years to have an audience with the Rebbe and Yossie had arranged it in less than three months.

I later learned that among the Lubavitch community, having a one-on-one meeting with the Rebbe was like having an audience with the Pope and was among the highest honors one could be given within that community. I suppose because it was arranged so quickly and easily, I did not realize at the time just how big of a deal it was. 

770 Eastern Parkway (referred to as just “770”), was originally a three-story Gothic revival mansion built in the 1920s. Over the years, as the Lubavitch community had grown, this building and a large apartment house next to it on the corner were joined. Thankfully this original structure had remained intact and had been added to rather than torn down and replaced.  

The evening sky had turned dark, and the only available light came from a few evenly spaced streetlights. As we approached 770, the light grew stronger as it came into view in all its splendor. It was dramatically lit from below and looked like a structure from a medieval university. 

As we entered the upper level, we walked through a small vestibule with a 15’ ceiling and a single naked bulb high above our heads. To our right were two adjoining rooms each with long wooden tables and benches that had clearly seen better days. The tables we piled high with books of all kinds scattered everywhere. At those tables were 35-40 men engaged in the study of Torah, Talmud, and other sacred texts. Typically made up of small groups of 2 to 6 men who ranged in age from 20 to 70, these study sessions often turned into debates about interpretations of passages and texts and were often loud and lively and at the same time very passionate and exciting.

I had only been active within the community for about two years and in that time had visited Crown Heights many times for Shabbat weekends and had prayed in 770 many times before, but being here now felt very different. 

As we walked through that entrance usually reserved for men, I could feel the eyes of those around us. Looking in our direction and no doubt thinking, they must be important if they’re getting to meet Rebbe, and I was thinking the same thing.

The Rebbe’s private office was on the floor just above ground level and he usually met people on Tuesday evenings throughout the year. 

As the leader of a worldwide religious movement who was also a brilliant rabbinical scholar and fluent in 17 languages, he was consulted regularly by his followers on virtually all matters affecting their future.  

Questions like: “who should I marry?” or “should I start a business?” or “what profession should I pursue?” or “what course should I take in life?” were just some of the questions the Rebbe was requested to answer six days a week.

Because this was (and still is) a society in which arranged marriage is practiced, anyone within the community who was contemplating marriage (both male and female) would write to the Rebbe for both his guidance and his blessing. 

We were led to a dimly lit corridor with some 20-30 other people and were left standing in a 5’ x 25′ hallway meant to accommodate no more than 15 at most. There we waited with Yossie who had met us on our way in. For close to an hour and a half we stood in relative silence and only whispered so as not to disturb the meeting currently under way as a steady flow of men and women were ushered in and escorted out of the Rebbe’s office in 15-to-25-minute intervals. As I stood there, my mind turned to… What if?

I had noticed on several prior occasions when praying in the great sanctuary hall on the floor below that every time the Rebbe entered or left the sanctuary, men of all ages would scatter and hide from his gaze. When I asked a friend why, he said it was believed that the Rebbe had the ability to see into a person’s soul just by looking into thier eyes.  

It had suddenly occurred to me that in a few minutes I would be looking directly into those eyes. What if it is true? What if he could see into my soul?  What would he see? Even at the tender age of 12, I knew I was no angel and was certain I had broken at least two of the ten Commandments. Seeing the righteous flock scurry like cockroaches as he entered and exited a room only magnified those fears. After a quick and reassuring look from Yossie, the Rebbe’s office door opened, a couple exited, and we were waved in.

My mother and I sat in the two chairs directly in front of the Rebbe’s desk and my brother and sister sat in two chairs placed against the back wall of his office. The Rebbe was standing as we entered the rather small room with a 1950s style florescent desk lamp as its only source of light which gave the room an eerie, film noir quality. With him were two assistants who stood in the shadows. 

As he began to speak to my mother, he looked directly at me. I found myself focused not so much on his words, but on his face which looked like the face of Moses. He had piercing blue eyes and a very full, almost entirely gray beard that fell to the middle of his chest.

Even all these years later, it’s hard to explain what I was experiencing. I knew instantly that I was in the presence of a truly great man. He gave off an aura that was nothing short of holy and angelic and wore a traditional long black coat (1860s style), a white shirt, and the signature Fedora worn by nearly all his male followers.  

While still looking at me, the Rebbe, in a fairly deep and slightly Yiddish-accented voice, said, “So, Mother… You look like you have a heavy heart.” It was at that moment that I began to believe that he really could see inside a person’s soul.

I should explain that the reason I could not have my bar mitzvah at my hometown synagogue was that my mother, a divorcé and mother of three, had been engaged in a long-term affair with the rabbi of our congregation in a small town in northern New Jersey. We had been active members of the synagogue and been welcome at all religious and community events until the affair was made public. Once it was discovered, we found ourselves virtually excommunicated from the synagogue and the Jewish community. As a result, I was without a place to have my bar mitzvah. 

In my mother’s defense, the rabbi (who was also a practicing psychologist) had been “counseling and comforting” a fairly large number of divorcees within the community and many years later it came to light that he was by legal definition a serial sexual abuser and had taken advantage of both of his positions as a rabbi and therapist by having had many such affairs with similarly vulnerable women. Many years later, I found out that he had been defrocked and his titles (both rabbinical and doctoral) were stripped away from him. Sadly, there were no apologies to any of those he had wronged or to the families whose trust he had for decades betrayed.  

In trying to respond to the Rebbe, my mother spoke in a restrained and strictly measured, barely audible voice, no doubt trying to figure out how she would explain the salacious and sordid details of the situation to the Rebbe… 

“Well, you see there is a problem…,” she began, pausing to take a deep breath as though she were taking a looooong drag of the cigarette. She was entirely on her own. I sat about two feet to her left facing the Rebbe’s desk and dared not look at her. I had held my breathe for so long that I was forced to take in a breath so deeply that I sounded like I was genuinely stunned. 

The room was so still and quit, it suddenly seemed even smaller to me. What could she reveal in front of her children and what, if anything, did we know? 

What could she admit to the Lubavitcher Rebbe about the affair she had had with our Rabbi at home? She was an adulterer and had to own up to it. 

Would she have the courage to confess to the sins she had committed, even if it was by coercion? This was an absolute defining moment for my mother and might have signaled a turning point in her existence. I glanced to my left ever so quickly and saw only the silhouette of her chest rising and falling rapidly. 

After what seemed like an eternity, she slowly began… “You see,” again a long pause… “My son cannot have his bar mitzvah at the shul in the town where we live, because…  because… “

 I shot a quick look over my shoulder and saw my brother and sister out of the corner of my eye, but there was not enough time or light to make eye contact. 

It was obvious that she was struggling to carefully choose what to say next when the Rebbe who had sat down behind his desk, leaned forward, placed the palms of his hands on his green desk blotter, slowly pushed his chair backward, and once again stood up. His measured and deliberate movements seemed to acknowledge the gravity of the situation. Slightly slumped, he walked slowly to the front of the table and leaned against it in a decidedly reassuring and connected way. Standing only a few feet from us both, I could barely see his face but there was a glow that reminded me of Charlton Heston in the Ten Commandments standing at the burning bush as God spoke to and through him. 

He slowly crossed his right arm over his left and wrapped his right hand around his voluminous gray beard and began stroking it in a downward motion. His hand was slow and soothing as if he were petting a cat or caressing a loved one. 

Though he was not particularly tall, looking up at him from my seated position he seemed larger than life with his shoulders slightly slumped forward, but despite his less than perfect posture he had a very real presence about him and it was clear to me that this was indeed an honor.

It was obvious that my mother was struggling for the “right” words and the Rebbe picked up on it. 

“So,” the Rebbe said in a low empathetic tone deeply connected to the obvious difficulty my mother was having. “So,” he again repeated, “he’ll have it here,” he said in a tone of voice so matter of fact that it seemed to answer a great ancient riddle. 

“Excuse me?” my mother said in a voice that immediately betrayed her surprise and relief at the same time. Her voice, which was usually very deep and akin to Lauren Bacall’s, jumped a full two octaves higher. 

“When you say here, where exactly do you mean?” she asked slowly and deliberately in an effort to clarify what she was sure she could not possibly have heard. 

“He will have his bar mitzvah here at 770,” the Rebbe repeated. And in those nine words it was as if all of her problems were resolved and in some odd way she was absolved of the sin which which led to our being here, at least for the moment. 

With those nine words, she was effectively let off the hook, and with that realization she began to cry uncontrollably.

In my mind I was thinking, did this just happen? Did the Lubavitcher Rebbe, the head of a worldwide Chassidic movement with thousands of followers, just offer to let me have my bar mitzvah at 770? 

The enormity of this kind of honor is difficult for one who is not Orthodox or Chassidic to grasp and would be equivalent to the Pope offering to perform my confirmation himself.

 I too felt the sudden urge to cry as I looked into the Rebbe’s eyes with abundant gratitude but held back my tears knowing that it would not be befitting for a boy who was soon to become a man. 

My mother’s tears finally subsided and the meeting, which has lasted for only about 15 minutes and which felt like suspended time, came to an end. It was during those 15 minutes that I knew he was going to be my leader and that I was going to be one of his disciples.

For almost a solid 5 minutes of the full 15, the Rebbe stared directly into my eyes, but I didn’t feel exposed or scared. I felt connected to him in a very real and spiritual way as though he were my grandfather or King Solomon the wise. His eyes were the kindest and most compassionate I have ever seen before or since.

At the meeting’s end, my brother and I stood and shook the Rebbe’s hand as we turned to walk out the door. My mother had to use all of her power to restrain herself from throwing her arms around the Rebbe and giving him a giant kiss (which was strictly forbidden). 

The irony was not lost on me that I was going to have my bar mitzvah at 770 instead of in the town where I grew up because that rabbi couldn’t keep his hands off of women who were not his wife.

As we left the office, I felt physically lighter, as if a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I could tell that my mother was still in shock as I saw Yossie standing in the hallway with a big smile on his face. 

I smiled back but couldn’t speak. “So, nu? How was it?” he asked as he escorted us out of the vestibule and through the doorway that led back out onto the street. 

“He’s absolutely w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l”, my mother answered with a genuine hint of awe in her voice that I–and I’m certain no one else–had never heard before.

“Steven will have his bar mitzvah here at 770,” she said, with a voice still in a relatively high octave, which betrayed the fact that she was clearly still in shock. 

I could see that Yossie had a hard time comprehending what my mother had just said and he too became silent. As he walked us back to the car through the humid night air, the look of surprise and happiness for me never left his face as we said our goodbye’s and drove off into the night. 

It wasn’t until several years later that I came to fully understand why. In all his years as Rebbe, he had only done this a handful of times and it was usually an honor reserved for lifers (those born Lubavitch) so, as it turned out this was a VERY big deal.

And so it was that on Thursday, September 28, 1975, my actual 13th birthday according to the Hebrew calendar, at the regular weekly Thursday morning prayer service at 770 that I, Simcha Yosef Ben Dovid Levi Meltz, was called up to the Torah and given the aliyah just before Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson… the Lubavitcher Rebbe (may he be of sainted memory). 

All in all, there was very little pomp and circumstance or fanfare as I completed this central and essential rite of passage in the Jewish religion which officially signified my becoming a man. I would from that point forward assume full responsibility for my actions as an adult according to Jewish law. 

I was not dragged from a hut and banished to the bush to fend for myself against wild and ferocious animals for a week with nothing but a dagger, nor was there any body-piercing involved whatsoever. I had not crossed a physical line between childhood and adulthood, but a spiritual one and I felt somehow different, like I was closing a chapter on my my old life and was beginning another as a Lubavitcher Chassid.

Unfortunately, the service was conducted in the upstairs section of 770, which I had glanced only a few months earlier when we came to meet the Rebbe. Because it was in the Men’s Only section of 770, neither my mom nor my sister were allowed to attend. 

It still saddens me that after all the struggles and crosses my mother had been forced to bear that she was denied the right to see her own son become a man according to Jewish tradition. I knew how proud she was of me, but I can only imagine how much prouder she’d have been had she been able to actually see it.

As I look back now, that was the day I officially “became” a Lubavitcher Chassid, a member of the largest Chassidic group within all of Judaism. And it was on that day that I took a leap of faith and landed squarely in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Steve Meltz was raised from the early age of 11 in the Chabad / Lubavitch community of Crown Heights, Brooklyn receiving a traditional Orthodox education while attending yeshivot in Brooklyn and in Baltimore, Maryland. Parting ways with the Orthodox community while in his late 20s, he began a voyage of self- discovery, and in 2007 (at the age of 45) received his smicah as a Reform rabbi and teacher. He presently serves as an affiliate rabbi in a norther New Jersey synagogue where his voyage of self-discovery continues to this day. 

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March 14, 2022 · 6:52 am

An Invitation

by Linda Laderman (Commerce Township, MI)

Invited to a friend’s grandson’s Bar Mitzvah I am divided,

directed to sit behind a gauzy white screen in the balcony.

My Siddur lies on my lap open to a random page.

Ancient words in a language that still feels foreign to me.

Yet I stand on command, a stranger in my old house.

Near the end of a long hardwood pew by the exit

I watch a round-faced woman, young enough to be my

granddaughter, hair hidden under a shiny black sheitel.

A bevy of blue ribboned ponytails nestle their restless bodies

close to her. In a meditative moment she stands and presses

her back against a wall. Eyes closed, she rests her fingers

in the sliver of space between her breasts and burgeoning belly,

then turns and gazes at the five fresh faces looking at her.

Each one returns her gaze, leaning toward her like a chain of flowers.

She pulls a fistful of candy from her pockets & passes pieces

of the sweets down the row, then beckons her girls closer.

Locking arms, they rise and follow her out to begin the long-skirted

walk home. Too late to catch her eye, wishing I could have told her how

I once sat & fished rock candy from my mother’s pockets, my tight

ponytail pulling at my forehead. I think of what it is to want and not want,

to separate from what is given. Boxed & bowed, waiting for me to open

the lid to take what’s there, a package I have been unwilling to unwrap.

After the last prayer is recited, I hurry down the stairs. For a minute,

I imagine I have time to catch up with the mother and her five Shana Maidelas.

 Linda Laderman grew up in Toledo, Ohio, where she has wonderful memories of walking to services and sitting in the balcony with her mother and grandmother at the old B’nai Jacob Synagogue. She earned an undergraduate degree in journalism from the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. Her news stories and features have appeared in media outlets and magazines. She returned to school in the 1990’s graduating with a Master’s of Liberal Studies and a Juris Doctor degree from The University of Toledo. Her memoir piece, “Grandmother’s Warning” was published in the summer 2021 edition of the Michigan Jewish Historical Society Journal, and later reprinted in the Detroit Jewish News. Her poetry has appeared in The Jewish Literary Journal, The Bangalore Review and The Sad Girls Literary Blog and is forthcoming this spring in The Scapegoat Review, The Write Launch and Beyond Words Literary Magazine. Linda currently lives in the Detroit area. For the last decade, she has volunteered as a docent at the Zekelman Holocaust Center, where she leads adult discussion tours and is a member of the Docent Advisory Committee. 

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November 22, 2021 · 7:30 am

Mazal tov, mazal tov!

November 22, 2021

Dear JWP contributors:

We’d like to thank each one of you for helping us reach our thirteenth year—our Bar Mitzvah year—and for trusting us with your work since the day back in 2008 when we opened our doors and invited writers to share your stories and poems with us.

The first JWP story appeared on November 5, 2008, and since then we’ve had the pleasure and good fortune of publishing 465 stories and poems which have come to us from writers spread across the globe (Canada, Israel, France, Australia, Gibraltar, South Africa, Spain, Germany, England, and, of course, the United States) and from 32 states (from Alabama to Wisconsin), all of which have helped us explore what it means to be Jewish.

When we look back at the past thirteen years, we find ourselves amazed (and, quite honestly, inspired) by the way each writer has made such a sincere effort to understand Jewish identity and Jewish life today. The diversity of voices, the depth of insights, and the strong desire–some might call it a compulsion–to explore the many aspects of Jewishness in so many ways, and from so many perspectives, well, it’s quite simply breath-taking.  

So, before this month ends, we’d like to pause for a moment to offer our gratitude to all of the writers who have helped deepen —and expand— our understanding of Judaism over the years. Your stories and poems have provided us with a stunning kaleidoscopic perspective of Jewish life and culture, and, in the process, have made us more sensitive to the multitude of different voices that are part of being Jewish today. 

Each writer has a different voice, of course, a voice that might sound different than those we may be used to hearing. And when we listen closely to each story, each poem, we can hear the sound of a key turning to open a writer’s heart and receive in return a precious gift—a deeply personal understanding of what it means to be Jewish. 

For all that we’ve learned from each other over the past thirteen years, and for all that I hope we’ll continue to learn from each other in the years ahead, thanks to each contributor (and to our readers, as well), for joining us in this project, which was created to help each of us explore the nature of being Jewish. 

May all of you continue to find joy and meaning in the words that appear on your pages each day. 

B’shalom,

Bruce Black

Editorial Director (and Founder)

The Jewish Writing Project

jewishwritigproject.wordpress.com

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October 29, 2018 · 5:56 am

Born in America

by Bruce Black (Sarasota, FL)

As a boy I learned Hebrew while sitting in
a cramped, stifling second-floor classroom
on Wednesday afternoons and on Sunday
mornings, chalk dust in the air and cigarette
smoke mixed with sweat and the stale smell
of ink and old paper, reading Bible stories
from ancient books with dusty yellow pages
and the smell of an exotic, sun-drenched land
rising from between the lines.

The land was called Israel—Eretz Yisrael
in Hebrew—and I was told to call it home,
even though home for me was a split-level
house in northern New Jersey within sight
of the tall spires of Manhattan where my
father worked, and all I knew about Israel
was that it was hot and dusty, a dry land
covered in sand, a place where refugees with
numbers tattooed on their arms came from
Europe’s death camps to build new lives.

I remember how the Hebrew letters felt so
strange on the tip of my tongue and made
the back of my throat swell so that I nearly
choked on the words, and I remember how
I turned the pages hoping my teacher wouldn’t
call on me to read, afraid I’d stumble and trip
in front of my friends over the unfamiliar words.

In the end I learned what I had to learn for
my bar mitzvah, no more, no less, and memorized
all the Hebrew words and how they were supposed
to sound by listening to a record the rabbi had
made, and I repeated the words over and over again
until they sounded like words that came from my
heart, words that I had absorbed in my mother’s
milk as an infant nursing at her breast.

Only I could never convince myself that Hebrew
was really my language. I always felt like an
imposter reading the words, as if the odd-shaped
letters and words belonged to someone else. I was
an American Jew, after all, and, like most Americans,
I spoke English, not Hebrew. And when I walked down
the streets of my suburban town in northern New Jersey,
I foolishly thought that my friends and I were safe
forever from the horrors of the past, and that Israel
served as a haven for others, not for Jews like us
who had been born in America.

How my friends and I had laughed at the idea that
we needed to learn Hebrew. Instead, we dreamed of
playing basketball and throwing a football in a high
spiral on a perfect autumn afternoon and sneaked
peeks across the aisle at the girls, their heads bent
over their books, pretending that we weren’t there,
intent on learning the Hebrew words that all of us
might need one day to strengthen our bonds as Jews.

Bruce Black is is the founder and editorial director of The Jewish Writing Project. He lives in Sarasota, FL.

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November 21, 2016 · 10:37 am

A Lasting Snapshot

By Bill Levine (Belmont, MA)

Every 50 years or so, my dad hosted a Bar Mitzvah celebration. The first was my own Bar Mitzvah in 1964, and then a belated celebration for my 20-year old nephew in 2013.  I appreciated my dad’s second celebration of Judaism much more than the first as it was an event that sealed off the fallout from sibling toxicity—at least for a day.

When my father first announced his intention to stage this rite of passage, I was skeptical.  I couldn’t envision my sister’s son, Gabe, adding to his Brandeis academics with Bar Mitzvah lessons.  I worried that dad at 94 didn’t have the wherewithal and energy to transform this bucket list item to reality.  Then there was the problem of my sister and I.  Could we collaborate instead of fight over our object of estrangement, namely dad’s checkbook?

On a Sunday afternoon in April it really did happen.  At my sister’s request, I had agreed to cut dad’s checks for Bar Mitzvah shoes for Gabe and floral flourishes instead of just flowers. With our help, Dad was able to shepherd in his last hurrah, and my nephew dedicated himself to learning Torah.  As the cantor warmed up the guests by extoling the virtues of my nephew, I surveyed the makeshift sanctuary.  The buffet table was packed with eating contests portions of deli. No one would leave hungry unless they were vegan.

The Senior Life residence function room filled with odd demographics—mostly under 21 Brandeis students; aging baby boomers; and the over 85 crowd.  It was an advertiser’s nightmare: no one 25-54. What resonated with me the most, though, was that my dad, my nuclear family, and my sister’s brood were all in the  same room for the first time since my dad’s 90th birthday party was held four years ago.

Later in the service I was called up for an aliyah to close the portable ark  in tandem with my sister.  Due to our recent turbulent relationship, I was disarmed when she gave me this procedural honor.  But it occurred to me that maybe closing the ark curtains could start to close the curtains on several years of friction between us.

After the service, my dad’s “greatest generation” crowd headed right for the buffet table, happy to be partaking of a spread that wasn’t punctuated by the sadness of a shiva.  Our extended family—consisting of dad, my son Matt, my sister, my niece Molly, myself and my wife Lesley—all sat together for the first time since mom’s funeral six years before. Our table talk was a triumph based on the low expectation threshold of no put-downs or arguments.  Meanwhile, a sprinkling of long-time connections paid their respects to my wheel-chair bound dad, introducing themselves with a hopeful “Remember me…”

Later came the shared  “what a family moment.” My fellow boomer cousin, Johnny, took out his iPhone, and my family huddled around to view a series of standard old relative shots featuring great-aunts in voluminous bathing suits on long demolished boardwalks.  Then Johnny showed us a picture of three well-dressed men in a 1940s swank nightclub. One was my great-uncle, one a cousin, and, unbelievably, the third man was Joe DiMaggio, The Yankee Clipper.  Right then I thought, Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio? To hang out with my family, obviously.  Our family was blessed with a TMZ (a celebrity gossip TV show and website) moment.

When the guests left, they took with them large Styrofoam containers of deli, enough for several brunches. My sister had ordered too much food at my dad’s expense.  I was irked. But I understood there was a truce on sibling rancor. Besides, I thought dad might have preferred the gluttony because at his Depression-era Bar Mitzvah his monetary gifts had doubled as the payments to the caterer.

A year after the Bar Mitzvah, dad was dead, and my sister and I were dueling heirs yet again. But dad had given me that day a lasting snapshot of a functioning, reasonably  happy birth family. It is still a vision to shoot for.

Bill Levine is a semi-retired IT professional, aspiring humorist, and freelance writer residing in Belmont, MA.

Note: “A Lasting Snapshot” was published previously as “The Bar Mitzvah Gift” in the Jewish Advocate and also on a senior’s web-site, GO60.US. It’s reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.

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August 15, 2016 · 10:37 am

My First Aliyah

by Judith Rosner (Sarasota, FL) 

I sat between my husband and brother and watched the snow falling through the stained glass windows of the synagogue as I folded and unfolded the piece of paper in my hands that held the prayers said before and after a Torah portion is read.  My cousin Walter sent them to me in the mail, written in Hebrew along with the English pronunciation.  I practiced saying them on and off during the two-hour drive from our home to Princeton, New Jersey where the synagogue was located and where his son, David, was to be bar mitzvahed.  I was both nervous and excited to be called to the bimah for an aliyah with my brother.  It was my first time.

Expecting a Reform service, since that’s how I remembered Walter being raised and where I feel most comfortable, I was surprised to find myself surrounded instead by the songs and prayers of my childhood—the cadence of a Conservative Jewish upbringing I long ago left behind. 

While my brother and all the boys went to Hebrew School preparing for their bar mitzvahs, I was sent to Sunday School with the other girls.  Our teacher, Mrs. Sands, was a beautiful, young Israeli.  She exuded class and charm and had a figure we adolescents dreamed of having as adults.  Full of life and ready with a smile, she had short, blonde, wavy hair.  Her dangling earrings would catch the light and brighten the glow about her.  Mrs. Sands had us mesmerized as we learned how to read Hebrew from a book similar to the English reader, “Dick and Jane.”   She taught us how to speak conversational Hebrew and to write in Hebrew script.  She led us in Israeli folk dances and taught us Israeli songs. 

Then one Sunday when we arrived for class, Mrs. Sands wasn’t there and we were told she wasn’t coming back.  Most of us figured she was let go because we were having too much fun and the Rabbi wasn’t happy about that.  Another theory was that she pronounced Hebrew words in the more modern, Israeli way.  In the end, all we knew was that the Rabbi fired her.  We never found out why.  And the injustice of his act led to an act of my own.

I decided I was done—done with Sunday School, done with the synagogue and its sexist rituals, done feeling warmly toward the religious teachings of my youth.  If Mrs. Sands wasn’t welcome, I didn’t want to be part of the establishment that didn’t want her.

I was pulled from my childhood memories as I heard the Cantor call my name along with my brother’s.  The English “Judy Rosner” sounded out of place, but then the Cantor used my Hebrew name, Y’hudite.  It rang true and sounded just right.  I was shaking as I took my place before the Torah scroll open on the reading table.  I felt a catch in my chest that made me worried I might cry.  Somehow I managed to say the prayers I had practiced along with my brother.  My daughter told me later she could barely hear me over my brother’s boom.  My husband was kinder and told me my voice complemented my brother’s nicely.

When we finished reciting the prayer after the Torah reading, the Cantor began moving me to the other side of the reading table.  I wasn’t tuned into the choreography of Torah reading, which he soon realized as he muttered somewhat annoyed under his breath, “No one seems to know where to go.” 

Rather boldly, I whispered back, “That’s because it’s my first time.”

“Your first time?” the Cantor asked incredulously.  “We’ll have to do something about that.”

And then came the best part.  The Rabbi rolled the Torah together and put a cloth on top as if to say, “Well get back to you in a moment,” and then he and the Cantor sang a special prayer just for me because it was my first aliyah.  Then the whole congregation sang the congratulatory song “Siman Tov! Mazal Tov!”  In effect, I was becoming bat mitzvahed, Conservative-style.  I felt proud, beautiful, and very special.  Mrs. Sands would have approved.

This wasn’t just a religious coming of age moment for me.   It was a political one as well.  Here I was, a woman in a Conservative synagogue, permitted to stand at the bimah and given an honor.  The synagogue of my youth would stand for no such thing.  Women took no part in the service, were not bat mitzvahed, and were never called up to the ark.

So now that G-d’s house has accepted me—on some of my terms, anyway—I feel better able to open my sanctuary, my heart, to G-d.  I still haven’t forgiven my childhood Rabbi for firing Mrs. Sands, and I still feel a bit like a foreigner in a Conservative synagogue, but I’m delighted that women now play a greater part in the service and that female rabbis have made their way to the bimah. 

I’ve been honored with an aliyah a number of times with my husband in recent years, most notably at the bat mitzvah of our daughter.  And each time I’ve been nervous and excited when singing the prayers.  However, none has had the emotional impact of my first time before the Torah at the Conservative synagogue in Princeton, New Jersey at the bar mitzvah of my young cousin, David.

Judith Rosner is a sociologist, leadership trainer, and executive coach.  She has published articles in the areas of leadership and management, stress and health, and women in the professions.  Her primary focus now is memoir.

For more information about Judy, you can visit her websitewww.therosnergroup.com.

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June 15, 2015 · 8:30 am

Growing Up Jewish in the South

by Jerome Massey (Fairfax , VA)

Interviewed by Rick Black (Arlington, VA)

(Rick Black and Jerome Massey met through Olam Tikvah, their shul in Fairfax, Virginia. This is the first of a two-part interview.)

RB: What was your bringing up like being Jewish in the South?

JM: I was born in Norfolk, VA, 27th of July 1922. My mother, Mollie Leibowitz, came from Latvia when she was maybe 10 years old. My father was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1900 and they got married in Norfolk, Virginia, probably around 1918-1919.

My Dad was apprenticed to a tinsmith when he was, I think, maybe 12,13,14 years old and when he was 16 years old, he finished his apprenticeship and was considered a mechanic. He claimed that he was the youngest tinsmith-mechanic on the Atlantic coast. He stayed in that kind of work til the 1920s and then he went to several other businesses.

The economic times in the early 1920s – things were good and things were bad; people made fortunes and lost fortunes. He ended up in the shoe business and worked for Hofeimer’s – that was a chain of shoe stores. He worked for them for a while and then he came up to Washington and worked for Hahn’s Shoe Company and another shoe company and then he went into business for himself.

My mother and he broke up, he remarried to Henrietta Driefus over in Alexandria, and my sister and I spent part of the year in Alexandria and part of the year in Norfolk – that went on for quite a few years. My mother remarried to Joseph Hecht, who was a watchmaker and jeweler, so I was raised by several different families. I was raised by an Orthodox family, a Conservative family and a German Jewish family.

RB: Was your mother the Orthodox side of the family?

JM: Yes, my mother came from an Orthodox family and my father’s family was Conservative. But I guess I might be what they call a universalist. I believe that all religions are basically the same and they all teach you to be a good person. And if you follow the Bible, the Pentateuch or the Koran, they are all teaching tools to teach you to be a good person. And to teach you that we’re all human. We all make mistakes but we’re all human and God put us on the earth to take care of it and make it a better place.

RB: Did being in the military influence your faith at all?

JM: I guess so. You have some very, very bad experiences and then you wonder why you’re still here and then you finally come to one conclusion: that God puts everybody on earth for a reason, to accomplish something, and when you’ve accomplished that, it’ll just be time for you to leave. That’s more or less my thoughts on that.

RB: Did you used to have family seders?

JM: Oh, of course, we had seders all of Pesach, the first and second seder and the last seder at my grandfather’s house. All the big family was there, all my aunts and uncles and all their children. It went on from sunset to midnight. And my grandfather made his own wine. He had two kinds: he had some for the children and women and he had some for the men. I don’t know what he put in the men’s but it was much stronger than what he gave the children and the women.

RB: Did you ever help him make the wine?

JM: A little bit. He had these five gallon jugs – you know, these big five gallon jugs? – he used them. But there was never a shortage of bronfen at my grandfather’s house.

RB: What’s bronfen?

JM: You don’t know what bronfen is?

RB: No. Is that Yiddish?

JM: Bronfen is . . .

RB: Liquor?

JM: Yes.

RB: I never heard that term.

JM: It’s rye. Rye whiskey. There was never a shortage. When I was little I lived across the street from my grandmother and grandfather, so I would go across the street to their apartment and go with him to shul and he was the hazzan at the shul. I was the only grandson that went with him to shul. The other grandchildren didn’t live close by. Every Shabbas I went with him – Friday night, Saturday morning. I’d spend Friday night with him and then at the services on Saturday morning, they called him in, he would sit at this long table and discuss – I guess they were discussing the parsha of the week – I don’t know; I didn’t understand what they were talking about.

RB: In Yiddish or English?

JM: Yiddish.

RB: Did you understand Yiddish?

JM: Yes. It’s mostly gone now but at sundown, well, after services you would go back home and rest, and after sundown we would walk down to his store which was maybe eight blocks away, and open up his store, his grocery store. And he would keep that open, I guess, til 10 o’clock at night.

RB: On Saturday?

JM: Yes. You know, after sundown you can open . . .

RB: Yes.

JM: He sold live chickens and he had a shochet in the back – you know, to kill the chickens – and he had people in the back to take the feathers and everything off the chickens. You know, it smelled bad back there. And the shochet, I don’t know, I think the shochet charged him twenty-five cents or whatever it was. But that was normal in those days.

And my mother remarried to Joseph Hecht – a fine gentleman, my stepfather. He was very mechanically inclined and so he taught me how to use all kinds of tools. He said, ‘You could do anything you want to do and if you don’t do it right the first time, do it over again and eventually you’ll do it right.’ So, he would work on automobile engines or a watch – it didn’t make any difference, he could work on anything – and I learned how to do all these things. So, I was spending part of my time in Norfolk – my sister and I – we spent part of our time in Norfolk and part of our time in Alexandria.

RB: Was it much different up in Alexandria?

JM: It was entirely different because you went from more or less Ashkenazic, Russian or Latvian Jews to German Jews who had been in this country since, oh, some of ’em prior to the Civil War and right after the Civil War. So, you had – I think the word is nouveau riche – you had the rich German Jews and you had the people that had just come over from Russia. I guess just like the wetbacks who come up from Mexico, just finding their way around. So, you had two different civilizations, you might say. When you had dinner with the people up in Alexandria, always white linen tablecloths, white linen napkins, beautiful silverware, glassware and someone to serve the food to you. And your table manners had to be perfect; everything had to be perfect cause that’s the way they were. While the people down South – you might say almost, well, they weren’t peasants but there was a difference in their whole outlook. The people up in Alexandria were bridge players; the people in Norfolk were poker players. I mean, you’ve got different stratums of society.

RB: Would you go to shul up in Alexandria, too?

JM: In Alexandria, we went to the Beth El Temple. They had a rabbi that they had brought over from Germany while in Norfolk we had both the Conservative and the Orthodox shuls. We went to both of them, or all of them, and it was strange. When I went up to Alexandria, I’d never tasted bacon. I didn’t know what bacon was. Didn’t know from pork or bacon or anything like that. And they served bacon for breakfast. I didn’t even know what it was. It was an entirely different lifestyle.

RB: Did you like it?

JM: No. But it was just an illustration.

RB: But, I mean, were you aware it was kosher or not?

JM: I didn’t know. You take a six or seven year old boy and you don’t know. It was just a whole different culture. So, as I said, I grew up and eventually I went to grammar and junior high school in Norfolk, and then my father bought a house over in Chevy Chase, DC, and my sister and I came up here and we went to high school here.

We went to the best high school in the Washington area. In those days – in the 30s and 40s – people in Virginia and Maryland, a lot of them sent their children to school over in Washington because the schools in the District of Columbia were way superior to those in Virginia or Maryland. So, my sister Shirley and I both graduated high school in Washington, DC.

RB: Did you get Bar Mitzvahed?

JM: No, I never got Bar Mitzvahed. I didn’t but – well, it depends what terminology you mean. I went to Beth El temple and the rabbi handed me a great big Torah on one Sabbath that would have been my Bar Mitzvah Sabbath. He made me hold the Torah for the whole service, which I did. But as far as . . . I can’t remember reading anything. He made me hold the Torah that day, that Sabbath. When I got back home that day, my mother handed me a prayer book, which I still have in my library. She gave me [that prayer book] on my 13th birthday. It’s a little worse for wear, but I still have it.

Lt. Col. U.S. Army (Ret.) Jerome L. Massey won numerous commendations in his service during World War II and in subsequent years. He will be 93-years-old in July.

Rick Black is a prize-winning poet and former journalist for The New York Times who owns a poetry and fine art press in Arlington, VA. You can see his work at www.turtlelightpress.com

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February 3, 2014 · 7:30 am

Haftorah

by Richard Epstein (Washington, DC)

One syllable at a time
with correct cantillation.
That’s how I learn
the portion of the Torah
I will read on my
bar mitzvah day.

Again and again
I recite one
maybe two
syllables
until
the cantor
decides
the melody
embeds
itself
into my small brain.

I’m sorry to say
I never learned
the meaning of
the sacred words
I so carefully sang.

Richard Epstein lives in the Washington DC area and is active in the Warrior Poets sponsored by Walter Reed Medical Center, the Veterans Writing Project and he hosts an open mic venue for veterans and friends of veterans on the National Mall 

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