Tag #145307 - Interview #83224 (Ella Perlman)

The boys had their bar mitzvah, when they turned 13. It was a big ceremony. A boy was told to approach the Torah for the first time at the synagogue, and then he put on tefillin and tallit. Since that moment he was considered to be a grown up man, and could take part in the minyan like adult men. In the evening there was a party for friends and relatives. I attended the bar mitzvah of my cousins Zalman Shmakovich and Zalman Monchnik. Even my father’s sister, living in Johannesburg, [South] Africa, visited Zalman Monchnik’s bar mitzvah. I was told to read the excerpt from the Torah about the destruction of the temple in Israel. I was ten years old, but I remembered this moment for the rest of my life.