Bar mitzvah
members will be given aliyahs, the first to his grandparents.
“Are you going to say anything?” the rabbi asks Drew’s grandfather.
“I wasn’t really planning on it,” he says.
Joan Kalish smiles at her husband and says low to the rabbi, “He’s going to cry.”
The rabbi holds up Drew’s silky white prayer shawl striped with blue called a tallit, his first. It was his father’s but looks new.
Drew reads aloud in Hebrew the prayer stitched in silver along the edge of the prayer shawl.
Rosen tells Drew’s teary grandmother, “You can give him a big kiss.”
“If he’ll let me,” she says, and she takes Drew’s face in her hands. He is wildly ticklish, and he hunches his shoulders and screws up his face. She plants a soft kiss on his cheek.
Before Drew reads from the Torah, his parents and grandparents join him on the bimah. The rabbi removes the heavy scroll with both hands from a large wooden cabinet, the ark.
Rosen passes the Torah to Drew’s grandparents, who give it to his parents; in turn, they pass it to Drew, a symbolic handing down of Jewish teachings from one generation to the next. Ned rests the Torah against his son’s right shoulder. It is half as big as the boy.
“It’s just a little tricky to hold,” Drew says.
Before the Torah is read, it is carried around the temple. Rosen points where she wants Drew to go, down from the bimah and then around the room in a figure eight, up and down each aisle.
“What about the Sh’ma?” Drew asks.