By Ethan J. Kramer
After some debate with myself on where I wanted to have my Bar Mitzvah, I decided to have it in Israel. I couldn’t think of a more appropriate place to celebrate this special ceremony than in the Holy Land.
After months of travel preparation and years of Bar Mitzvah preparation, the big day, June 17th, finally arrived! My parents, Lee and Bonnie, younger brother, Dalton, and my grandmother, Bebe took our flight from Maryland to Tel Aviv.
To be honest, I was quite nervous about terrorists. I felt being in Europe and Israel brought me closer to them especially with the way the media had been bombarding us with news and photos of the terrorists and their activities in the Middle East. However, when we arrived Tel Aviv, on June 18th and stepped off the plane, the feelings of the intense heat and aridity made me forget those fears for the time being.
Our two interpreters, Sarah Blattberg and Kelli Stein, who are currently living in Israel for one year, also accompanied us for the entire trip so our group expanded from five to eight.
On June 21st, it was time for us to go to Jerusalem and my Rabbi, Jeff Bearman, met us at our hotel that evening. I finally got to meet the Rabbi and I was relieved to find how calm and relaxing he was. We did some rehearsals that night, part of which included Rabbi Bearman learning how to use the interpreters as my Bar Mitzvah was his first service working with deaf people.
For obvious reasons, June 22nd was the most important date on the entire trip, if not the most important of my entire childhood! It was my Bar Mitzvah day. I was quite nervous, to be honest. Prior to the trip, there was some debate of where to have the ceremony. We had considered the Wailing Wall but it was important to me that my mother and grandmother physically be involved in the ceremony. At the Wailing Wall, they would have had to remain separate from the male participants and watch the ceremony from behind a wall. It would have also been a problem for the female interpreters so we decided to have the ceremony at the Southern Wall which is part of the Western Wall and it is right next to the Wailing Wall, ‘split’ by a partition. The site was beautiful with an environment that only time and thousands of years in history could have created. Huge, yellowish-beige rocks were everywhere where various plants grew inside the gaps of the rocks. Rabbi Bearman led the services but it was very family-oriented to ensure that each member of my family was actively involved. Each of us has had readings to do individually and/or together. I felt a range of emotions running through me: pride in myself, amazement with Judaic history, intense spiritually, humility before G-d, and relief that this time had finally come. After the service, we had a brunch with grape juice, Israeli bagels, cream cheese, lox and donuts. It was the perfect closure to my Bar Mitzvah!
The entire trip was a wonderful experience and I am so thankful and blessed that I had the opportunity to have this event in the Holy Land. Memories of this trip will, without a doubt, be deeply etched in my mind forever, especially in my Jewish paternal lineage.
