It\’s not too often that a 13-year-old boy can change the world — or at least the world in which he lives.

So, it is difficult to underestimate the significance of the recent bar mitzvah of Menachem Mendel Moskovitz, known as Mendel.

As the eldest son of the Venezuelan-born chief rabbi of Kharkov, his calling to the Torah represented a coming-of-age of the Jewish community in post-Soviet Ukraine and of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in particular.