A fearful farewell to the dragon of childhood
A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys” is a line from Peter, Paul and Mary’s song “Puff, the Magic Dragon.”
A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys” is a line from Peter, Paul and Mary’s song “Puff, the Magic Dragon.”
The golden age of Hollywood taught me about war, crime, natural disasters— and what was funny about America.
Lillie Hill knew that 16 marked a turning point in her son DJ\’s life. And while she had looked into several African rites of passage, she believed the Jewish bar mitzvah ceremony, with its emphasis on family heritage and good deeds, gave her the best blueprint to validate her son\’s dedication to family, school, community and church and to pass on her family\’s values of education, worship and social outreach.
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.