Meet Ruth Banarer, the 99-Year-Old Torah Reader

If you think it’s remarkable that a 99-year-old woman reads the Torah in synagogue each year on the anniversary of her bat mitzvah, wait until the backstory is unveiled.

On a recent morning, around a table at Temple Ramat Zion in Northridge, Ruth Banarer recalled when she became interested in Hebrew.  

When her younger brother Herbert was training for his bar mitzvah, a rabbi came to their Glendale home every week after Shabbat to teach her brother and several of his friends. Ruth, at 16, was a welcome participant. This was 1939. The decades sped by without further exploration of Hebrew … until a short while after Ruth’s husband of 55 years, Norman Banarer passed away. That’s when a seemingly minute event forever altered the lives of Ruth and her daughter, Janice Banarer, for the better.

Ruth and Janice had been living together since Norman’s death, having purchased a home in a Northridge neighborhood not far from the Conservative shul Ramat Zion.  One day, while out on a walk, Janice came across a sign that caught her attention. It was for an open house at Ramat Zion, and declared “Same Management For Over 5,700 years.” 

“I thought that was pretty good,” she said to herself, and later told her mother and explained how deeply the sign had affected her.

Everything began to fall into place. “For my 60th birthday,” Janice said, “I decided that I wanted to learn Torah.” Before Ramat Zion, “we never had belonged to a synagogue,” Janice said. Her timing was fortuitous. Rabbi Ahud Sela had recently arrived at Ramat Zion. 

Entering the large Devonshire Boulevard synagogue was a revelation for both Banarer women. “When I came in, everybody welcomed me with open arms,” Janice said. Her new friends were knowledgeable in Judaism, and that encouraged her further. “I really wanted to learn my heritage. I wanted to be bat mitzvahed, because I never had been …  I was so envious of everyone in the synagogue,” she said. “They had had lives in synagogues since they were little. They knew all about this and that. I really wanted to learn and be part of it.”

At that moment, fate seemed to be knocking on the door of the Banarer women … if only there were enough time. Ruth was in her late 80s and had been suffering from circulatory problems in both legs. Eventually, her right leg was amputated below the knee.

This accelerated Janice’s desire to have a bat mitzvah before her mother would become homebound, or worse. “At her age,” said Janice, “we thought, what is going to happen? Will she wither and die?”  

Ruth said doctors “tried everything” to resolve the circulatory problem. “I had a little machine that would pump my legs,” she said, but nothing made a significant difference. Years later, the woman who turned 99 on Sept. 15 shrugs off the missing limb. “It’s not so bad,” she said.  

Following the amputation, doctors told the Banarers it would take a year to heal. That did not stop Ruth from driving. Outfitted with a left foot pedal, she drove until a few years ago. She stopped because “there are too many crazy people out there.” 

“We were not sure if she was going to be okay,” Janice said, which made her desire to be bat mitzvahed even more urgent. But there was a shul problem. When she asked Sela if her learning could be sped up, he said no, but not quite flatly. “We are going to have an adult b’nai mitzvah class next year,” he told Janice. “Can you hold out until then?”

The rabbi remembered Janice anxiously responding, “I don’t know if I have until next year.” After explaining about her mom’s aging and uncertain health, the rabbi agreed to one-on-one lessons. “I told her, though, it would be harder to do on her own,” he said. With steely strength, Janice was determined to conquer. “I said, ‘I really would like to do it now.’ So Rav Sela took me on. It was quite a task because I knew nothing.” 

A lifelong musician, Janice wanted to become bat mitzvah to mark her 60th birthday — and she did. First, though, Sela attached a condition. “He agreed to take me on if I would be the poster child for next year’s b’nai mitzvah class,” Janice recalled.

At her 2012 bat mitzvah at Ramat Zion, Janice announced that there was going to be an adult b’nai mitzvah class and more. She had decided to take the class again “because my mom was going to take it with me.”

These days, Janice reads the Torah regularly at Ramat Zion, and she is part of a leining (reading)  group known as the “Yad Squad.”  Ever since her bat mitzvah, Ruth has been reading at least once a year, sometimes more, around her birthday on September 15.

A decade ago, when Ruth was learning to lein, “some of the younger women in the class were struggling to keep up with her,” Sela said. “This 89-year-old was leading us in the race to become a bat mitzvah. We were not concerned about Ruth having any trouble leining on the day of the b’nai mitzvah.”

“Mom has leined a segment of the Torah portion every year since her 89th birthday.”
– Janice Banarer

Janice seconded the motion. “Mom has leined a segment of the Torah portion every year since her 89th birthday,” she said. “She has a good singing voice and she is good at the tropes.” Janice will be called to the Torah on Yom Kippur. She will read the first parsha, and Ruth will read the second.

Has the 99-year-old been practicing?  “Of course,” Ruth said, with a smile. How often? “Usually, when I get up in the morning, before breakfast, after breakfast. Maybe in the afternoon if I don’t have anything else to do.”

Janice helps coach her mom. “She learns it, too,” she said, with a friendly glance across the table. “And not just phonetically. She practices regularly.” With a friendly, maternal smile, Ruth cracked, “and she corrects me, too.” Next, it was Sela’s turn: “Without any research, I am proud to proclaim Ruth as the oldest active Torah reader in the world.”

In 1923, Ruth Banarer was born between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, near the present-day site of Cedars-Sinai Hospital, to a father from Bessarabia (modern day Moldova) and a mother from a long-since obliterated city outside of Kiev. She grew up all across the Los Angeles area during the peak years of the Great Depression. They moved to wherever her father could find work, including Long Beach during the major 1933 earthquake.

 Throughout her long life, Ruth also has been an award-winning artist. These days she takes abstract art and exercise classes at Pierce College.

Janice said, “Mom is our secret treasure.” 

Find out more about Ruth and her artwork on her website, RuthBanarer.com.