Celebrating Without a Father

August 13, 2006
JERUSALEM – It certainly wasn’t the special day 13-year-old Nadav Elharar had in mind for his bar mitzvah. Like most families, Elharar’s parents had planned a special Shabbat service at a synagogue near their home in Kiryat Ata, a suburb of Haifa, followed by a celebration at a reception hall.

But the untimely death of his father, Nissim Elharar, who perished July 16 in a Hezbollah rocket attack while on the job at the Israel Railway train depot in Haifa, changed those plans, forcing the family to cancel preparations altogether in the midst of their mourning. The involvement of a local rabbi, though, and his associates ensured that the bar mitzvah would take place without burdening the family with making the arrangements.

“Nadav has taken all this very hard,” said Orly Elharar, Nadav’s newly widowed mother. “Nissim was his best friend. They did everything together – played basketball, flew model airplanes, you name it.”

The loss was apparent at the Elharar bar mitzvah last Thursday, which for symbolic and spiritual reasons was moved from Haifa to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, one of Judaism’s holiest sites. A tearful Nadav – who four weeks ago cried over his father’s open grave, “Who will be by my side at my bar mitzvah?” – was escorted by Rabbi Menachem Kutner, the head of the Chabad-Lubavitch Youth Organization’s Terror Victims Project.

Kutner, along with Rabbi Chaim Shlomo Diskin, the Lubavitch emissary to Kiryat Ata, planned the event for the Elharar family. They provided a bus for several dozen people to travel to Jerusalem, and underwrote a celebration lunch at a hotel near the Old City. As an additional gift, the bar mitzvah boy received a bicycle.

Notable guests included Shmuel Rabinovitch, Rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Places, and Kiryat Ata Mayor Yaakov Peretz.

"Nadav has taken all this very hard,they did everything together – played basketball, flew model airplanes, you name it." As is the case on virtually every day that the Torah is read, numerous bar mitzvahs took place at various locations on the packed Western Wall Plaza throughout the hot, sunny morning. The sounds of prayer and the chanting of Torah readers reverberated from the pink and orange stone walls in a blending of accents and melodies: Ashkenazi, Sephardic, American and Chassidic.

Predictably, there wasn’t a dry eye when Nadav was called, for the first time in his life, to recite the blessings over the Torah scroll. Still, participants managed to inject a little bit of joy into the otherwise somber occasion with singing and dancing. At one point, they even hoisted Elharar onto a pair of shoulders for a go around the Torah.

And despite the wisps of smiles, Nadav understandably could not take his mind off the dark cloud hanging over the celebration.

There wasn’t a dry eye when Nadav was called, for the first time in his life, to recite the blessings over the Torah scroll. “I couldn’t stop thinking about him,” said Nadav about his father. “The whole way to Jerusalem, I kept imagining what it would be if he were alive, what it would be like to have all this with him at my side.”

Pointing to Elharar’s loss, Kutner saw the bar mitzvah taking place at its originally scheduled time as a necessity.

It’s bad enough this boy lost his father,” Kutner said after the ceremony, “but if he had missed out on his bar mitzvah as well, it would have stuck with him for the rest of his life. Of course it was a sad occasion, but at least he can say now he’s had a bar mitzvah and follow in his father's ways.”

Orly Elharar agreed.

“I am very sad because I lost a great husband and my children lost a wonderful father,” she said. “Inside we are crying, but outside we try to keep smiling.”

Finding a smile amidst the pain: Nadav Elharar enjoys a brief moment with family and newfound friends, including Kiryat Ata Mayor Yaakov Peretz (third from left). Photo: Sharon Matityahu