Dear Family:
As the date of my Bar Mitzva was approaching, my parents and I began considering the question of how to signify this day, in a way that would be connected to the Jewish tradition, as well as have meaning in our present lives.
Together with my parents, we began to look into previous generations of our family, specifically when and how Bar Mitzvahs were celebrated. We soon realized there were changes in the way the traditional service was held. In 1885, the Zaida of my Savta, Zaida Moshe Nachshen, who grew up in a religious family in Russia, was called to the reading of the torah, as was the custom in those days. One year later the first PM of Israel, David Ben Gurion was born, and only ten years further on, the first movie was shown. Moshe married Sarah, and they are the parents of my great Savta Tanya.
In 1915 Italy joined WW I which began one year previous. In NY on Fifth Ave, 30,000 women protested for the right to vote. In Czechoslovakia, the youngster Laiosh, son of Shmuel and Rivka Greenfeld celebrated his bar mitzvah. Laiosh married Bracha, daughter of Yaakov and Rachel Feldman, and they are the parents of Saba Ari. Both of them perished in the Holocaust. In 1927 the first telephone conversation took place, and a few days later the first television program was transmitted.
The same year, the Israeli lira came into being. My great grandfather Zaida Jack, who was orphaned from his parents and raised by relatives in Poland, reached the age of bar mitzvah; four years later he emigrated to Canada; there he married my great grandmother Tania, who came from the Ukraine, where she was witness to a pogrom at the hands of the Cossacks. In July 1944, in Budapest Hungary, Ervin Balasz, was called to the Torah in the synagogue. Four months later the he with all the other Jews of Budapest were sent to the Ghetto. Four years later, he joined a youth movement and came on aliya, changing his name to Arieh Barnea. He married Nechama, my grandmother, daughter of Tanya and Jack.
On the 14th of May 1948, David Ben Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel, ending the British mandate. The next day the War of Independence of Israel broke out, and Chaim Weitzman was chosen as Israel's first president. And the Israeli flag became the official flag of our country. Two months later in July of 1948, the youth Avraham (Umale) Olshevsky arrived at the age of Bar Mitzva. Ten days before that Moshe, Umale's older brother, was killed in the Battle of Mishmar Hayarden. The family was in mourning, and his Bar Mitzva was never celebrated.
Umala joined a youth group which went to Kibbutz Misgav Am, where he met Rutka Avrach, the daughter of Nomi and Menashe, whose sister Chanke', was also killed in the War of Independence.
Rutka and Umale got married, they are the parents of my father who was called Moshe in memory of is uncle. In 1975 the UN passed a resolution equating Zionism with racism. Two strong explosions rock the Savoy Hotel in Jerusalem. My father enters the 7th grade , and as was the custom in his kibbutz, he received along with his classmates 13 Bar Mitzva 'challenges', such as work for a day in a factory, spend time at a religious kibbutz, etc. The year climaxed with the boys and girls being accepted as members of a youth movement where they were given various challenges to demonstrate bravery and courage.
Today, on the 23 of August 2008, kav bet b'Av Tashsach, 123 years after Savta Nechama's Saba, Zaida Moishe, was called to the torah, my parents and I have decided to hold a Bar Mitzva ceremony the way it has been done for generations and generations. A ceremony that is tied not only to our past, but finds expression and relevance to our family values and way of life. I want to thank my parents, and my siblings Rotem and Goni for accepting my wish to have a traditional Bar Mitzva ceremony, and their help in me finding the way to do it. Thank you to Beeri Zimmerman and Tal Al Halevi, for helping to prepare the ceremony, and thank you to all my family for coming and celebrating today with me.
Omer Ashuri