It's never too late to celebrate a Bar Mitzvah.
Arieh Czeizler, age 78, will step up to read from the Torah and celebrate the seminal life event next month, 65 years after his 13th birthday, when Jewish males usually celebrate their Bar Mitzvah.
A Holocaust survivor and veteran resident of Moshav Kerem Maharal, located south of Haifa, Czeizler told his childhood story to some of the children in the community approximately four years ago, and started a process that led him back to Europe and ultimately to the Torah.
Among the children was the son of a senior Air Force commander, who invited Czeizler to participate in a military delegation at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, in the program “Witnesses in Uniform.”
The project brings military delegations to visit death camps and other Jewish points of interest in Europe, accompanied by a Holocaust survivor. It also maintains the sites.
Czeizler described his entrance to Auschwitz with the IDF delegation as a victory and revenge against the Nazis, who murdered his mother and 41 other close family members.
During one of the follow-up missions to Europe, Czeizler mentioned to one of the delegates that he was taken by the Germans before his Bar Mitzvah.
His grandfather had managed to teach him to put on tefillin (phylacteries) and read the Haftarah (portion of the writings of the prophets associated with the weekly Torah portion) in preparation for the rite of passage, but the young boy and his family were taken by the Nazis before he reached his Bar Mitzvah.
His fellow delegates immediately offered to help him complete the process. The joyous ceremony will be held next month at the moshav's synagogue. Czeizler's children, grandchildren, and family members of the delegates all are planning to be there.