Encino : Seniors Bring Poise to 2nd Bar Mitzvah

The group of Jews who celebrated their bar or bat mitzvah Tuesday morning were in some ways typical of the many 13-year-olds who undergo the rite of passage every year. They fidgeted nervously as they sat on the podium, waiting their turn to read from the Torah, the Jewish book of Scriptures. From time to time, they smiled and waved at their relatives who sat in the audience.

There was just one big difference: all of the participants were at least 83.

In an unusual ceremony, Valley Beth Shalom held a second bar mitzvah for 12 congregants who were at least 70 years past their 13th birthday--the age at which Jewish youths celebrate their first bar mitzvah, if they are boys, and bat mitzvah, if they are girls.

Because 70 years is considered a lifetime according to Jewish tradition, the second bar mitzvah marks the beginning of a second life. It is seen as a joyful occasion to live life with renewed enthusiasm and optimism. Appropriately, the ceremony was held on Simhat Torah, a festival day in which Jews celebrate having read the Torah to the end, and beginning to read it again.

“This is a new beginning for them,” Rabbi Harold Schulweis said. “We can begin to live again, to study again.”

Yossi Dresner, the synagogue’s bar mitzvah teacher, said he had never before heard of a synagogue holding a second bar-mitzvah ceremony for such a large group.

The 12 bar mitzvahs sat patiently on the podium through the Torah readings and songs at the beginning of the service. Sunlight streamed through the stained-glass windows of the modern sanctuary, coloring the blond wood of the back wall turquoise, orange, yellow and red.

Then, to celebrate Simhat Torah, the five books of the Torah--actually five scrolls encased in velvet and adorned with silver knobs--were carried around the sanctuary, so that congregants could touch them lightly with their prayer shawls, then kiss their shawls. Worshipers sang lively songs, including the traditional Israeli dance song, “Hava Nagila.”

At about the midpoint of a 3 1/2-hour ceremony, the bar mitzvahs--eight men and four women--took turns reading from the Torah, which each carried off with a poise that would have been the envy of most 13-year-olds.

Bar mitzvahs said the event was a happy occasion for them.

“I feel good,” said Irving Halperin, a 91-year-old Studio City resident. “I’m looking forward to my third.”