“This is a great day for me. I was not privileged to experience a bar mitzvah. Rather, I experienced continuous escape during the Second World War, with severe hunger. My family was murdered before my eyes.
Celebrating my bar mitzvah brings me serenity. And today I return to being a 13-year-old boy.”
So said Avraham Alstar, 83-years old, who celebrated – along with 9 other Holocaust survivors – a moving bar mitzvah at the Western Wall.
The Individual Within the Collective – Parashat Bamidbar
Parashat Bamidbar 5786 Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, Rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites This week’s Torah portion opens the fourth of the Five Books
25 Iyar 5786
May 12, 2026
