Bar Mitzvah on the Fly

How to cope when war reroutes your family simcha from Israel to Italy

bar mitzvah rerouted
By | Jul 15, 2025

We were on our way to Israel in June for our grandson Odin’s bar mitzvah in Jerusalem. All six of us—my husband, daughter and son-in-law and our two grandchildren. Odin was going to say his parsha, or Torah portion, at the Western Wall, followed by a lunch in Jerusalem where he was going to give his d’var Torah for our friends and relatives from all over the world and the United States who had traveled to Israel for the occasion.

Three hours before we were supposed to land in Tel Aviv, the pilot announced that the airport in Tel Aviv had closed and we were being rerouted to Rome, where we landed shortly thereafter.  A year-long process of planning and anticipation came to an abrupt halt.

Life among the Jews has always been a voyage of flexibility, adaptability and even compromise.

We arrived in Rome on a Friday realizing that there might not be a bar mitzvah at all. But, through our luck of having a friend on our flight, and his ingenuity, we were able to find a small synagogue in Rome that was willing to accommodate us.

Saturday morning came and we attended services at a shul filled with Hasidim in streibels and caftans. Odin was called to the Torah for an aliyah, the blessing over the Torah reading, but he could not read the Torah itself, since his bar mitzvah was scheduled for Monday at the Wall and he had prepared the following week’s portion, not the one the congregation was reading on Shabbat morning. The congregation welcomed him, though, and invited him to do the Torah reading that evening during the evening service, when the next week’s portion would be read.

Saturday night arrived and we returned to the synagogue. It was packed. When the time came and Odin was called to the Torah, he proceeded as if nothing had happened. Reading from an upright Torah encased in a silver cabinet, with around ten Hasidic men hovering over him in case he made a mistake, he performed his Torah reading flawlessly.

The hoopla and singing and dancing and embracing that took place after this was overwhelming. The congregation couldn’t have been more joyful, or we more proud.

Life among the Jews has always been a voyage of flexibility, adaptability and even compromise. For me it was a deep disappointment not to have my grandson read at the Wall or give his d’var Torah to family and friends. It was a disappointment for him to miss performing a planned “twinning” ceremony at Yad Vashem that would link him with a Holocaust victim of a similar age and bar mitzvah date, and to miss visiting the Nova site to learn about the continued vulnerability that our people face.

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But there are two larger lessons about Jewish life that I learned from the microcosm of my experience: We adapt and we rise to the occasion. We value our tradition in all settings regardless of location and type of denomination. We are joyous in experiencing our religion despite the exigencies that befall us.

And I learned that, despite unfulfilled dreams, there are existential matters far greater than our own experiences that have larger importance. The fact that we could not dance at the Kotel paled in comparison to the threats that people were facing in Israel as bombs fell on their homes, their streets, their schools and even their shelters. Their adaptability far exceeds our inconvenience, and their fate demands far more attention than the rerouting of my grandson’s bar mitzvah. 

Janice Weinman Shorenstein has led nonprofit organizations in the Jewish and social service fields for more than 50 years.

Top image: The author, top middle, with her family, traveling for the bar mitzvah of her grandson Odin (bottom left). With permission.

One thought on “Bar Mitzvah on the Fly

  1. Audrey K Darby says:

    How moving.

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