Tag #122897 - Interview #101186 (Leizer Finchelstein)

I don’t remember many things about the bar mitzvah ceremony, but I do know that most of my relatives attended it. Family relations were very strong when I was a child. Of course, the entire religious ceremony was performed at the synagogue, then our parents organized a small family table. There was no Jewish boy who hadn’t been circumcised 8 days after being born or who hadn’t had a bar mitzvah at 13. You had to study very hard for the bar mitzvah, even if at times you didn’t know exactly what you were saying. The boys were tutored by a rabbi or by a melamed on most occasions, a sort of a teacher. You had to prepare yourself so that you wouldn’t shame your father. The ceremony marked the fact that you were becoming a man, you made a commitment of going to the synagogue and wearing a tefillin, of becoming a good Jew.