They stood side by side. A stranger who passed by them as they stood by the stones of the Western Wall, the place from which holiness has never moved, could have thought that they were members of the same class, celebrating together their arrival under the yoke of the Torah and the commandments. Only those who saw the Yad La'Ahim activists running around among them, helping one to better tighten the bond of hand against heart and the other to adjust the bond of head against brain, could have perceived that a turbulent and shared story of salvation was hidden behind the festive and moving appearance.
These were eight young men of religious observance who were rescued in recent months, in heroic operations by the best of Yad L'Achim, along with their mothers and brothers, from Arab villages. The rescue of each and every one of them did not begin and end with the rescue itself. The social workers and mentoring teams of Yad L'Achim continue to accompany them, heel to toe, to personally guarantee the assimilation of the young children who were born and raised in a hostile and foreign environment and to raise them step by step on the path that leads to the House of God.
Even before the Bar Mitzvah, which was held, as mentioned, this week at the Western Wall, a preparatory event was held last week for the grooms-to-be, during which each of the eight grooms-to-be was presented with luxurious sets, each containing a pair of kosher and elegant tefillin and a fringed tallit. This week, the boys appeared at the Western Wall with members of Yad Laachim and Chabad Netanya, who were partners in producing the event. Looking at each of their faces aroused immense excitement. But a few months ago, they spoke Arabic and woke up every morning to the voice of the muezzin in the villages where they were born and lived, without even knowing that they were sons of the Jewish people, their mother being a daughter of Israel who fell into captivity by a narrow and enemy. This week, they stood in front of the stones of the Western Wall, with strips of tefillin on their heads and arms and with tearful, closed eyes, they cried out in a loud voice, "Shema Yisrael.".
The excitement reached its peak during the Torah reading. The presence of many Jews at the Western Wall, at all times and at all hours, made it possible to organize several Torah reciters, so that all eight of the bar mitzvah grooms could receive aliyah on the day of their holiday. There were no fathers standing next to the grooms and loudly reciting the blessing "Baruch Shaftarani." In their place were the weeping mothers who accompanied the sights and sounds from the women's shelter and could not believe that a new chapter had begun in their lives. A shiver ran through the audience when one of the bar mitzvah grooms asked to recite "Mei Shebrech" for his two older brothers, who were named after him, and unfortunately, they have not yet managed to escape the jaws of the village in which they are besieged.
All the while, standing beside them, excited, next to the Torah scroll, was Rabbi Eliezer Menachem of Broida, the generous-hearted one who donated the eight pairs of tefillin for the benefit of the eight survivors.
After the prayer, the children and their mothers, along with Rabbi Yoav Robinson and Rabbi Chaim Kahn, Yad L'Achim activists who accompanied them on a special and empowering tour of the Western Wall tunnels, returned to their homes. Soon, Yad L'Achim said, the Bar Mitzvah celebration will be held, which will conclude the exciting event and signal their continued ascension from strength to strength.
""Until now," said one of the mothers of one of the bar mitzvah boys, "I thought the most exciting moment I had ever experienced in my life was the moment when the rescue vehicle left the village and sped onto Highway 6. Now, after the bar mitzvah at the Western Wall, I think and feel that it was even more exciting. Here, for the first time, I felt that we were truly starting our lives over again, with all that that implies.".
Rabbi Shmuel Lipshitz, one of the leaders of Yad L'Achim, said this week following the moving ceremony at the Western Wall: "Years of being cut off from any glimmer of Judaism, of suffering and pain, were left behind at the sight of the pure faces of those who had performed the mitzvah." Referring to the saying "He who has blessed" that made everyone who heard and saw it shiver, Rabbi Lipshitz said: "Let us not forget all those many other Jewish children who still wake up every morning in hostile and impure villages, without being at all aware that they are lost sons of the Jewish people. We will continue to act and do everything in order to save them and return them to their Father in Heaven, to their people and to their homeland.".
