By COLlive reporter
As befitting its name, BMD Detroit, the Bar Mitzvah division at Camp Gan Yisroel in Kalkaska, Michigan, hosted a Bar Mitzvah celebration for 2 campers – Mendel Wilhelm from Burlington, Vermont, and Mendel Zaklikovsky from Bellaire, Texas.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the strict health regulations enacted at the camp, the parents and siblings of the Bar Mitzvah boys were not able to fly in to participate in the festivities. Instead, they joined via Zoom.
Apparently, this isn’t the first time a parent was physically absent from a son’s Bar Mitzvah in Mendel Wilhelm’s family, due to their lives of self-sacrifice for Yiddishkeit.
Rabbi Yitzchok Raskin, Head Shliach of Vermont and grandfather of Wilhelm, told about his own Bar Mitzvah experience in his remarks shared on Zoom.
He was raised in Casablanca where his parents Rabbi Leibel Raskin OBM and his wife Reizel Raskin served as the Rebbe’s Shluchim in Morroco. For school, he was sent to a Yeshiva in Crown Heights. His Bar Mitzvah was going to be in Teves 5734 (1974).
His father had planned on flying to New York for the occasion and wrote to the Rebbe about his plans. The Rebbe wrote back that he shouldn’t make the trip, citing the Yom Kippur War led by Arab states against Israel a few months earlier.
The Rebbe commented it may be risky to leave the country and then obtain permission to return home during a time of open hostilities. Rabbi Leibel Raskin stayed behind, thereby missing the Bar Mitzvah of his son Yitzchok.
The celebration still took place thanks to the efforts of the boy’s uncle, Rabbi Dovid Raskin OBM, Chairman of Lubavitch Youth Organization (Tzach) in New York and Director of the Central Yeshiva Tomchei Tmimim Lubavitch at 770 Eastern Parkway. The Rebbe himself was involved to make sure it was a joyous day for the boy.
It was then that the young Yitzchok Raskin learned that his own father, Rabbi Leibel, also had his father missing at his own Bar Mitzvah.
Rabbi Leibel was raised in Communist Russia and was sent to the underground Chabad Yeshiva in Samarkand (in today’s Uzbekistan) to study as a boy. His father, Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Raskin OBM, a mohel and chossid, was not able to travel for his own safety…
And so, a long line of fathers who missed their sons’ Bar Mitzvahs continued…
This camp is so under-rated, but when you come a whole new picture opens up!
As a staff member I must say the Bar Mitzvah was unbelievable all to the credit of BMD Director Levi Raichik, I heard he’s opening up a 8th grade program, and if yes, i know im gonna be there!
Mazel Tov again!
I personally have been in BMD detroit this past year as camper it is the best camp on earth!!!!!