Forty youngsters from an immigrant absorption center in Tzfat (Safed) and eight others from the United Kingdom jointly marked their Bar- and Bat-Mitzvahs in Jerusalem on Monday morning. Gathering at the 80-year-old Yeshurun synagogue, located alongside the Chief Rabbinate offices in the heart of the capital, the boys and girls symbolically took their places as full-fledged, and fully obligated, members of the Jewish community.
The joint Bar-Mitzvah was the initiative of Britian's United Jewish Israel Appeal (UJIA), which is dedicated to promoting the Jewish communities of the Galilee and the U.K., and the Jewish Agency for Israel. It was the culmination of a joint educational project of the UJIA and the Jewish Agency linking Jewish youths in Britain with immigrant youths in Tzfat.
The British and Israeli children, mostly immigrants from Ethiopia, communicated during the course of the past year through video and email. They also took part in joint, but long-distance, educational activities. The program, which has run under the auspices of the Jewish Agency for several years, enables Jewish youth from overseas to get to know and make lasting friendships with their peers in Israel, many of whom come from backgrounds very different from their own. Jewish Agency representatives called the collective Bar- and Bat-Mitzvah at Yeshurun synagogue the high point of the youths' joint activities and ongoing interaction.
The Tzfat-U.K. Bar Mitzvah year educational initiative was incorporated as part of the UJIA's Living Bridge project, aimed specifically at connecting the Jewish communities in the Galilee and their Diaspora brethren in the United Kingdom.