Smiles were intermingled with a few tears and plenty of laughter as 36 girls from across Israel came together in Jerusalem recently for a joint bat mitzvah celebration, complete with a celebratory dinner, speakers, singing and dancing.
However, this wasn’t the typical simcha. For one, each of the girls celebrating this milestone in a Jewish child’s life had lost a parent—in nearly all of the cases, their father. Secondly, the arrangements and the costs were handled by the Colel Chabad social-service organization to make things as easy on the families as possible.
“Family milestones can be much more stressful and difficult, both financially and emotionally, without a parent,” explains Rabbi Amram Blau, director of Colel Chabad’s Widows and Orphans Project in Israel, known at Chesed Menachem Mendel. “It’s heartwarming to see the joy on the faces of these young women and their families in reaching this momentous occasion.”
Established in 1788 by the Alter Rebbe—Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement—Colel Chabad is the oldest continuous operating charity in Israel. The Widows and Orphans Project is just one of many programs in its vast network of services, which includes soup kitchens, children’s camps, senior needs and more.
“When Colel Chabad called me last year before my son’s bar mitzvah, I was overcome with emotion,” said Almira, a widow and mother of six. “I couldn’t even imagine how I was going to plan for the ceremony. And now, with my daughter’s bat mitzvah, we are overwhelmed with thanks, and in awe that there are people who are so generous and thoughtful to children who lost their fathers.”
The day’s festivities included a trip to Rachel’s Tomb, located between Jerusalem and Bethlehem; and separating and making challah—separating the traditional Shabbat loaves being one of three mitzvot specifically for women (the others are lighting the Shabbat candles and going to the mikvah as part of family purity.)
Addressing the birthday girls, Rebbetzin Yemima Mizrachi, a popular Torah scholar and speaker in Jerusalem, said: “The world gains strength from you young women. When we see your beautiful smiling faces, glowing from this special celebration, and we know all the hardships you have been through, we can’t help but feel that we must smile and be happy as well.”
This was the fourth year that Colel Chabad has offered a bat mitzvah program; it also runs an annual bar mitzvah ceremony for boys who have lost a parent.
When asked why the organization began offering such affairs for the young girls and boys, Rabbi Menachem Traxler, the organization’s director of volunteering, responded rhetorically: “Why not?”
More seriously, he added: “We look for every way we can help during their childhoods, especially during the school years, so they will be able to grow and lead their own lives successfully.”
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