A Boy Living In A Juvenile Facility Dreamt Of A Bar Mitzvah. A Group Of Retirees Made It Happen.

Members of the Schmooze study group. Image by Benjy Silverman

Image by Rabbi Benjy Silverman
Joshua had little hopes of having a bar mitzvah. After all, bar mitzvahs aren’t exactly a common event at the Dobbs Ferry juvenile facility for youth at risk.
Until a group of Jewish retirees stepped in.
It all began with a phone call between two strangers.
Rabbi Benjy Silverman of Chabad of Rivertowns vividly recalls the day when he received a call from a woman named Sandra. Sandra explained that her grandson Joshua was living in Children’s Village, isolated from friends and family, and while he was somewhat familiar with Hebrew and had attended a Jewish day school before being sent to the facility, he did not have the resources to study and prepare to become Bar Mitzvah.
The conversation sparked an idea for Silverman.
For the past year, Silverman had led a weekly study group at the High Point Condos in Hartsdale, New York for about thirty retirees, discussing current events “through a Jewish lens.”
The group had recently shared their desire to make a financial contribution to the Chabad in honor of their study group with the rabbi, but Silverman had other ideas. “The timing of Joshua’s grandmother’s call was such a good shidduch (match) that I told the group about it and suggested they sponsor Joshua’s bar mitzvah instead,” says Silverman.

Members of the Schmooze study group. Image by Benjy Silverman
The group, affectionately calling itself The Schmooze (we like the name, as you can understand), loved the idea, and got to work pooling together their own personal contributions to cover all the costs including catering, live music, goodie bags, a gift for the bar mitzvah boy, an ice cream cake, and at Joshua’s request, plenty of sweets.
A week or so before the big day, Joshua met with the rabbi at the Chabad to practice donning tefillin (phylacteries) and reciting the blessing.
On the morning of Thursday, June 7, 2018, Joshua became a bar mitzvah.
His grandmother, Sandra, who first initiated the idea was there to witness the simcha. Joshua’s grandfather drove in from Florida to surprise the young man too. Several members of The Schmooze joined in the festivities including Elliot Weitz, 70, a retired educator from Lehman College. “In our discussion group, we discuss Judaism as a family so when I heard about Joshua, my first thought was, ‘He’s part of our Jewish family. Let’s do something for this boy’,” Weitz said from his home in the High Point Condos.
“It was a very uplifting day and Joshua was well-prepared and spoke beautifully and was so appreciative for what was being done for him,” Weitz continued, getting choked up just thinking about the occasion. “His siblings were there and his mother was kvelling. There was such a sparkle in her eyes. This was a family that needed some happiness in their lives, and I’m glad we got to be a part of it.”
Mazel tov, Joshua — we’re all kvelling.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Make a Passover Gift Today!
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
- 4
Opinion Yes, the attack on Gov. Shapiro was antisemitic. Here’s what the left should learn from it
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Harvard president: As a Jew, ‘I know very well’ that concerns about antisemitism are valid
-
Fast Forward Ben Shapiro, Emily Damari among torch lighters for Israel’s Independence Day ceremony
-
Fast Forward Larry David’s ‘My Dinner with Adolf’ essay skewers Bill Maher’s meeting with Trump
-
Sports Israeli mom ‘made it easy’ for new NHL player to make history
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.