Holocaust Survivors Celebrate Bar Mitzvahs 70 Years Later — At Western Wall
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Aiden Pink November 15, 2017
More than 40 Holocaust survivors who were never able to celebrate their bar or bat mitzvahs finally did so last week — at the Western Wall.
The event, coordinated by the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and Israel’s Office for Social Equality, was welcomed by participants who never got a bar or bat Mitzvah of their own 70 years ago.
“All my life, I felt that I missed it so much. I am so excited and happy,” said Alexander Buchnik, age 87.
Aspir Ravicher, who turned 11 when the war began, recounted her experience in Ukraine. “We ran away with nothing but the clothes we had on us. We had nothing, we were hungry all the time, we lived in a crowded place — I remember that it was mostly cold and I was very hungry…. [A bat mitzvah] was not something we could have done.”
Semyon Liebman, born in St. Petersburg, noted that in the Soviet Union, after the war, “it was forbidden to talk about Judaism or anything about the bar mitzvah, so we did not talk about it at all.”
During the ceremony, men wore tefillin and read from the Torah at the Kotel, while women participated in a separate ceremony under the Western Wall Tunnels. The whole group got a tour of the tunnels under the wall, and a dinner with the Wall’s rabbi, Shmuel Rabinowitz.
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
