Sometimes really awesome things happen (My only Bar Mitzvah Experience)

During my assignment in Germany, my family had some really interesting cultural experiences that I doubt would have occurred just about anywhere else. Part of this experience was geographic. My family was housed on the largest US Army post in the region and it was also near the military hospital that served our area. Part of the experience was due to daily aspects of life and my families' need for medical services and part was just being at the right place, at the right time and looking at the world with an open mind.  

While a lot of our friends and associates were either from my work or from the building where we lived on Leighton Barracks, the second largest group of friends my family and I socialized with were doctors. My being a Warrant Officer pilot and all US Military doctors being Commissioned Officers, stateside I don’t think we would have been in the same social circle based on economics and the areas where we lived. During Germany assignments, this socio-economic division is blurred due to lack of varied housing and some social pressures we encountered living in a foreign country.

My wife Anna first met the son, daughter and wife of the Allergist for the hospital while she was picking up our son at the elementary school on post. The daughter (Anya) and my youngest son (Timothy) were in the same third grade class together. These two mothers started talking while waiting for the kids to come out after school and soon began talking on a regular basis and it was also apparent the kids also got along well. A few weeks later, my wife had an appointment with the Allergy clinic and met the allergist. 

He was a Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) and was the only allergist in the entire European Theater and we were glad she could get into seeing him. Anyone who has ever taken a battery of allergy tests knows that it can be a long process. If your doctor was any type of semi-social person, you got to talking about varying subjects to pass the time waiting for results. It came to light somewhere in the process of waiting for kids at school and doctor visits at the clinic, the dots were connected and the Allergist Dr. Ned Bernton, turned out to be Anya’s father.

Anya’s mother (Anita) was an Indian national and Ned was of Jewish descent from the New York area. In the military, you quickly became immune to mixed races and mixed religious beliefs in families and you just went with it. That was exactly what we did. We only became aware of Ned being Jewish when we invited the Berntons to dinner and we inquired if there were any dietary restrictions (Some people are allergic or just plain don’t eat some foods. With many food items being rationed at military bases overseas, it was logical to ask to avoid issues. 

Ned mentioned they were Jewish but they were reformed and didn’t adhere to the dietary restrictions. That was pretty much the last we spoke or thought about it for a while. Dinner went off well and while we were of very diverse origins, we got along well as a group. Ned and Alice had a son, Jeremy, who was near my older son’s ages and Timothy and Anya were already buddies. 

While Ned didn’t talk a lot of shop, he was an audiophile (He also shared a passion for the Grateful Dead with my wife) and we determined we shared a lot of music interests and he found my job as a pilot fascinating. Anna and Anita clicked pretty well too, and we were fascinated how Ned and Anita had met and they found the story of our convoluted journey interesting too.

We began to see more of each other when Anita returned to India for a couple weeks and Ned needed some help picking up Anya after school because he had appointments running long or a sudden staff meeting etc. It was not unusual to come home and find Jeremy and Anya doing homework with our kids while waiting for Dad to come get them. 

One day when Ned came to pick up the kids he mentioned he was having trouble learning Hebrew which initiated a conversation about why he was learning it at such a late time in his life. This is when we learned that his son, Jeremy was nearing his Bar Mitzvah and Jeremy had decided he wanted to be an Orthodox Jew. Since their father and grandfather participate in the ceremony, they were both learning at least enough Hebrew for their parts. The final result of all this interaction was an invitation to our family to attend the Bar Mitzvah ceremony.

In the following days, we learned that the ceremony would occur in a town northwest of Wurzburg called Urspringen. There you can find a holocaust museum called Synagogen-Museum Judengasse. The building was a Synagogue built in 1702. It was renovated in 1932 before it was demolished and desecrated on 10 November 1938 by the Nazis. During that period, all the Jews in the region were deported. 

The building was restored and converted into a museum by the people of the town from 1989 to 1991 the museum opened to the public in 1992. This says a lot about the town. No Jews remained in Urspringen. We also learned that Jeremy’s Bar Mitzvah was historic in that it was the first Jewish religious service performed in the building since 1938, over 50 years.

When we arrived for the ceremony to find the building a fever of activity. At least twenty local women were working in the kitchen providing food and drink while the building was being readied for the service. The first thing I encountered was the wearing of a Yarmulke (a skullcap worn by Jewish men) that my sons and I were requested to wear. My sons were also co-opted into assisting with passing them out to other men as they entered the synagogue. 

The building itself was very austere with benches for pews and a minimalist decor. At the north end of the building there were several local women setting up food for those attending the service. My wife and I did a tour of the building taking in several photos and articles about the building, the Holocaust and the history the museum was preserving.

Soon, we were all seated and the room was filled to capacity. There was an electric feeling in the room and we were keenly aware something wonderful was about to happen. There were people we knew from the army hospital there, including Doctor (Maj) LeBeau The Dermatologist, Doctor (Maj) Ruskin the Urologist. Dr. LeBeau commented to my wife: “I didn’t know you were Jewish!?” and she replied jokingly; “I didn’t know you were Jewish either!” (A few minutes later she did tell him we weren’t Jews but friends of the family.) I didn’t talk to Major Ruskin as he was working as lay clergy along with the German and Army Rabbis in the service.

When it was time start, a very striking dark haired lady arose and walked to the center of the room. She waited for the room to quiet and then she explained that she would be singing a song in Hebrew, German and English. What occurred next floored most the people in the room. First, she used a pitch pipe, to get the key right. (She was thrown off for a second as Jeremy’s grandfather was taking pictures with an auto-winding SLR camera and it made a sound off key and she had to use the pitch pipe again.) 

The amazement started when she began to sing. I have never heard such a powerful and melodious voice, she literally rattled the rafters! Her voice completely filled the room and I could barely register some gasps of astonishment from people around me, I was gasping myself. She was Israeli, a professional Opera Singer in Kassel, Germany, and Jeremy’s aunt. Her song was full of emotion and wonder and as she changed from Hebrew to German and then finally English, the wonderment multiplied. We later learned she was also the wife of Ned’s brother, Professor of Arabic Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in New York City.

The ceremony began with the Chaplain from Heidelberg explaining how the service would proceed and his apology on the quality of his Hebrew, He too was a reformed Jew but he was trying hard. The local German Rabbi conducted the service while the Chaplain and Dr. Ruskin assisted him. Both Ned and his father did Jeremy proud with their parts and their Hebrew recitations. 

Then after Jeremy had completed his part of the ritual there was a bit of levity as my son Tim and Jeremy's sister Anya began pelting Jeremy with candies from the balcony (Apparently, a tradition at the end of the ceremony) and Anya got a tad carried away and threw an unopened bag too. There was a small reception there in the building with the locals who were helping with the ceremony and then we caravaned back to Wurzburg to Ned’s house for the main reception.

I was not surprised to find the Bernton's lived in a large home with immaculate grounds. There was a catered buffet with all kinds of Kosher food and I was particularly fond of the Lox (a fillet of brined salmon) which I’d never eaten. The house was a torrent of activity with 50 to 75 people of all races and nationalities. We ate and talked and enjoyed cocktails and initially we expected to stay for a half-hour or so and go on our way. The evening didn't exactly end that way though.

My wife Anna spent the better part of an hour conversing with a Chinese Neurosurgeon, who was flabbergasted to learn Anna was a homemaker who’d never gone to college (He had assumed she was a professor.) Meanwhile, I was also accorded a minor celebrity status when it was learned I was a helicopter pilot. 

I’m not exactly sure how it started, but eventually I ended up giving a class on Rotary Wing Aerodynamics to Ned’s Brother, a German lawyer and about four others who were curious about what I did and how helicopters worked. While we were socializing, the kids all kept each other busy doing kid things. 

We finally went home as the sun began to set on what had been a most amazing day.