A Second Coming of Age

At first his voice still hinted of uncertainty. Seymour Leshin paused, winked at the congregation and drew another breath.

By the time he finished chanting his portion of the Torah, the audience broke into applause. Like thousands of Jewish teenagers, Leshin had come of age and was now a bar mitzvah, a “son of good deeds.” A man.

It wasn’t the first time Leshin, 83, closed the book on a ritual that has marked the rite of passage for Jewish males for thousands of years.

He was given a second chance because, according to Jewish law, the human life span is 70 years and Leshin had reached adulthood all over again. The ritual of a second bar mitzvah, though by no means common in America, is increasingly popular among Jews of varying denominations, experts say.

“A couple of thousand years ago, 70 seemed like an extraordinary time to live--the way we look at people who celebrate their 100th birthday,” said Rabbi Arnold Rachlis at the University Synagogue in Irvine, who has known Leshin for 30 years. The Whittier man traveled to Irvine for his second bar mitzvah because it is one of the few Reconstructionist temples in Southern California.

It turned out to be more of a journey than he anticipated.

Rather than any religious impulse, it was the prospect of a long recuperation from hip-replacement surgery that inspired the retired psychiatrist to undergo the rigors of a second bar mitzvah.

“He first came up with the idea when he was getting bored,” recalled Leshin’s 73-year-old wife, Lenore. “Little did he know. It was a lot of work to do.”

*

Last November, he started training with a nearby cantor.

During the bar mitzvah ritual, which occurs near a youth’s 12th or 13th birthday, the teenager chants from the Torah scrolls for the first time. Boys and girls prepare months in advance, memorizing the Hebrew text and melodies of a Torah section, normally read by a rabbi that day.

“You’ve got to be a little crazy to do that,” Leshin joked. “With the bar mitzvah, a child prepares to be part of the Jewish community. They are prepared to live a life of moral responsibility. So now, at 83, I’m going to say that? It doesn’t make sense. I’m celebrating my life of living as a Jew and having fulfilled those values to be a good human being.”

A second bar mitzvah is simply a nice way to reflect on a lifetime, according to some.

“The number 83 is on some level an abstraction,” said Rabbi Elie Spitz, who celebrated a second bar mitzvah for a member of his Conservative congregation B’nai Israel in Tustin three years ago. “But the first bar mitzvah remains a pivotal moment from which to track time. The recognition that 70 years have passed is a profound recognition of passage of time.”

Others said that a second bar mitzvah merely has symbolic importance.

“I know that among the liberal denominations it’s certainly become very popular,” said Jeffrey Gurock, professor of American Jewish history at New York City’s Orthodox Yeshiva University. “I don’t consider it a major trend. But with the positive aging of Jews, fortunately more and more people are reaching that golden age and congregations want to take note of it.”

Rabbi Joel Landau from the Orthodox Beth Jacob Congregation of Irvine had a more pragmatic view.

“Once you’re 83, how many things do you have to celebrate?” he asked. “Many people sit back in their 80s, just sort of become couch potatoes. [A second bar mitzvah] is recognizing the opportunity to realize that he is not through yet doing mitzvahs [good deeds]. It’s sort of like a retirement plan. The more good things you do, the better returns you get.”

*

Leshin’s first bar mitzvah seven decades ago is blurred in his memory.

His mother’s parents--observant Orthodox Jews from Poland, who spoke only Yiddish--refused to travel on the Sabbath. They lived in Brooklyn while the Leshins’ home was in the Bronx and the 13-year-old boy had only seen them on occasional visits.

On the day of his bar mitzvah, a subway ride took him again into an unfamiliar world.

“I had never been to that synagogue,” he said. Leshin’s parents did not attend temple and he had worked with a private tutor and memorized his Torah section.

“They handed me a strange text in a strange environment,” he said.

Afterward, the family gathered for lunch and did not throw the big party that has become customary these days.

The lack of festivity was nothing unusual at the time.

“A hundred years ago, the bar mitzvah was not the occasion that it has become in the U.S.,” Gurock said. “The young man would go to synagogue and for the first time be called to the Torah. The father would bring a bottle of schnapps--that was the occasion.”

Leshin didn’t expect much more this time either.

“No gifts please,” read the invitations that went out to 100 friends and family members.

He was more concerned about memorizing the ancient melodies he would evoke for the congregation a few days later.

“When you are up on the bimah [the Jewish altar], that scroll has no vowel signs, periods, no cues as to what the melody is,” he said. “That, I think, is rough.”

*

For better or for worse, Leshin’s extended family filled the pews at University Synagogue on Aug. 14. Leshin smiled proudly as he carried the Torah scrolls in procession, surrounded by friends who sang and danced in a circle.

The big moment had arrived.

Weaving his way through his children and grandchildren, who had stepped up to the bimah to offer support, Leshin finally stood before the opened Torah scroll and chanted a portion from Shofetim, the Book of Deuteronomy, that prohibits magic and sorcery.

“He was very worried at first,” said Shannon McGrady Bane, the cantor at La Mirada’s Temple Beth Or and Leshin’s coach. “He was afraid that he wasn’t going to do it. He thought he might need a cheat sheet. But he didn’t. He did great. He had such an energy and love for what he was doing.”

After the service and before joining his friends for yet another family lunch at a hotel in Irvine, a beaming Leshin was already looking ahead.

“I was enjoying it,” Leshin said. “I had a great time. Someone said to me the other day that now I can prepare for the third one. The way I feel now, I could.”