88-year-old finally becomes a bar mitzvah

Rabbi Moti Fradkin unrolls a Torah as Lazar Abramovitch prepares to read the blessings
Rabbi Moti Fradkin unrolls a Torah as Lazar Abramovitch prepares to read the blessings


By Donald H. Harrison

Donald H. Harrison
Donald H. Harrison
Lazar Abramovitch
Lazar Abramovitch

SAN DIEGO – Seventy-five years later, Lazar Abramovitch finally had his bar mitzvah on Thursday, Oct. 6, at a special ceremony held at Jewish Family Service’s Jacobs Family Campus.

Abramovitch, 88, had hoped to celebrate the advent of Jewish adulthood on his 13th birthday, but the German Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union precluded that.  After the war, the Communist government of the Soviet Union frowned on the overt practice of religion, and anyone trying to have a bar mitzvah risked punishment.

So Abramovitch missed the ceremony in his youth, as well as during 32 years as a Kiev University graduate that he worked in the field of marine biology in several cities of the Soviet Union.

He has been in San Diego for 26 years, worshiping at the Orthodox Congregation Adat Yeshurun, but he had thought the time for his bar mitzvah had long passed.  That is how the situation remained until he met Aviva Saad, the energetic force of nature who runs the senior center on the JFS campus in the Kearny Mesa area of San Diego.

Saad, a Jew from Mexico City, one day was discussing with Abramovitch “how lucky we are living in a country where we have the freedom to be Jewish.”  When she learned that he was never allowed to have a bar mitzvah in the USSR, she responded, “Lazar we are having a bar mitzvah for you!”

One really doesn’t argue with Saad—at least not successfully!

Saad contacted Rabbi Moti Fradkin of the Chabad Hebrew Academy who calculated, according to Abramovitch’s birthday, what portion of the Torah he should read from on his bar mitzvah.  It was Vayelech – in which Moses tells the Israelites that after they cross into the Promised Land they should read the Torah completely every seven years. The portion is read during the Days of Awe, the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Wearing a tallit and kippah and a worried smile, Lazarovitch listened as Saad explained to the multi-religious audience of seniors that when Jews experience something new, they say  the shehekiyanu prayer thanking God for allowing them to experience that moment.

Aviva Saad, foreground, relates the circumstances leading up to Lazar Abramovitch's bar mitzvah, as Rabbi Moti Fradkin adjusts Abramovitch's tallit.
Aviva Saad, foreground, relates the circumstances leading up to Lazar Abramovitch’s bar mitzvah, as Rabbi Moti Fradkin adjusts Abramovitch’s tallit.

How many of you have attended a bar mitzvah of an 88-year-old man? she asked.

There was laughter but no raised hands.

“So this is a shehekiyanu moment!” she declared, and launched into the prayer.

Rabbi Fradkin brought to the ceremony a Torah that had been dedicated to Saad by her parents, and he suggested that the souls of Saad’s parents as well as those of Abramovitch’s loved ones were in attendance along with the bar mitzvah’s sister Esther who was in the audience. Esther also briefly held a microphone for Abramovitch until he declared that his voice was strong enough to project to the whole room.

Abramovitch was the third person called to the Torah by Rabbi Fradkin, and quietly he pronounced the blessings before and after Fradkin’s Torah reading.   When he finished the blessing following the reading, the audience showered him with soft, sweet candies in celebration of the moment.  Seventh graders from Chabad Hebrew Academy quickly gathered up the candies – similar to the way children scramble for the candy that falls from a piñata.

Lazar Abramovitch stayed covered in a tallit as celebrants showered him with soft candies
Lazar Abramovitch stayed covered in a tallit as celebrants showered him with soft candies.  His sister Esther, with hand at her face, is to his left.

A solemn moment was when Kaddish (a prayer sanctifying God) was said for all the souls that hadn’t been able to attend Abramovitch’s bar mitzvah including his grandparents and parents and various other relatives, some of whom were murdered by the Nazis and others by the Soviet Communists.   A more joyous moment came when Fradkin and Abramovitch paraded the Torah through the congregation giving everyone a chance to touch it and then kiss their hands.

In a brief speech following the Torah ceremony, Abramovitch said reading the portion dealing with Moses and the Israelites prompted him to desire to “commit my life to the eternal truth.”

At another point in the celebration, Rabbi Fradkin took Abramovitch by the shoulders and began a dance with him in which other men joined in as women watched from their section of the room.  In honor of Abramovitch’s roots, Fradkin even attempted a kazatzke – a dance in which one kicks one’s leg from a squat.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com.  Comments intended for publication in the space below MUST be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and by his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the United States.)