A Bar Mitzvah Thanks to Hillary

By COLlive reporter

Shmuel Rosner, political editor of the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, was covering a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for his blog Rosner’s Domain.

The featured speaker at the rally at the University of Northern Florida in Jacksonville, Florida, this past Thursday afternoon was going to be President Barack Obama.

A large crowd was trying to make it in, but there was only room for 7000 of them. Rosner estimated that thousands were sent home when the fire marshal closed the doors and said no more.

One of the disappointed people left out was a young Jewish American named Joseph Gross.

Standing nearby was Rabbi Eli Wilansky of Chabad at the Beaches, located in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. He was carrying a Tefillin bag and holding a sign on which a human arm decorated with Tefillin was depicted.

Here’s Rosner description of the encounter:

In the Chabad manner of complete immunity to scrutinizing looks and complete indifference to what other people might consider odd or embarrassing, Wilansky was scrutinizing the line for Jews. Until he spotted Gross and the two women standing alongside him.

Did you put on Tefillin today, he asked young Gross.

Not today – not ever was the answer.

Gross comes from a family that is – as he told me – disconnected from Jewish practice. His sister and brother went through some years of Jewish education, but when it was his turn, the interest of his parents eroded to the point of no interest.

Gross did not have Jewish education, and when asked if he wanted a Bar Mitzvah more than five years ago he figured that this would require “additional work” on his part. So he declined, like his brother did a few years earlier – a decision he now says both later regretted.

Rabbi Wilansky smelled an opportunity. Let’s have a Bar Mitzvah, he suggested.

Here, asked Gross.

Sure, Wilansky said.

You will put on Tefillin and this will be your Bar Mitzvah.

Gross did not hesitate much before agreeing.

When I asked him later why he agreed to Wilansky’s suggestion, he gave me an answer I did not quite expect: “This was a prayer that we will not end up having Trump as our president,” he said.

He offered his left arm and forehead to Wilansky and repeated the blessings in Hebrew word by word. As the two were having their little ceremony, the line kept moving slowly forward, so the rabbi and the young Jew had to walk as they were praying together.

“This Bar Mitzvah is a belated one,” Rosner wrote. “It is also a highly political one. And a highly entertaining one. And, as far as I’m concerned – I was an accidental witness to this event – also a moving one.”

“You ought to give these Democratic politicians credit for facilitating at least one great Mitzvah,” Rosner concluded.