Once More, With Feeling

Peter Wollstein lived in the Shanghai Ghetto when he celebrated his bar mitzvah in 1947. But now, looking back more than six decades later, he says he is unhappy with his Chinese simcha.

“I memorized a couple of prayers, and that was about it,” said Wollstein, whose family fled Nazi Germany prior to the start of the Holocaust. “It wasn’t very demanding.”

Wollstein, 75, has become more deeply involved in Jewish life in recent years, and his cursory bar mitzvah in China has inspired him to go back and give it another try. Last year, after the High Holy Days, he joined a class to study for a second, more authentic experience.

Second b’nai mitzvah are not uncommon. The average lifespan is 70 years in Jewish tradition, and a second bar or bat mitzvah is typically celebrated at 83. But when Wollstein is called to the Torah with the rest of the Valley Beth Shalom (VBS) adult b’nai mitzvah class on April 3, it will be as a bar mitzvah do-over.

Wollstein’s family lived in Berlin when he was born in 1934. His father, a political activist who worked in the greeting card industry, served an 18-month prison sentence for distributing guerilla literature shortly after Hitler came to power.

“I am told he was in prison when I was born,” Wollstein said.

After his father was released, the family secured the right to leave Germany. Their first choice, the United States, was denied. When the family was allowed to leave for Japanese-occupied China, Wollstein says they were forced to relinquish their assets.

“It certainly was better than had we stayed behind,” he said. “It was survival.”

Under pressure from the Nazis, Japan’s imperial army ghettoized the approximately 20,000 German Jewish refugees in the crowded square-mile Hongkou District, known as the Shanghai Ghetto. Wollstein shared a one-room apartment, bereft of plumbing, with his father and uncle.

Wollstein said his father arranged for him to attend Catholic school, adding that there were no options for a Jewish education.

“My counterparts in this country studied Torah, [but] I never learned how to read Hebrew,” he said.

Soon after his bar mitzvah, Wollstein’s family immigrated to the United States, settling in Minnesota, where he studied at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. After marrying in 1958, Wollstein spent 35 years working academic administration jobs at various universities around the country. He says his career hindered exploring his Jewish identity.

“Professionally, I lived an assimilated life,” Wollstein said. “Opportunities for regular interaction with people in the Jewish community was much more limited than it might have been if I had become a lawyer or a doctor.”

Ten years ago, when Wollstein retired, he and his wife started connecting to Judaism on a deeper level. Still, having another bar mitzvah “was not even in my thought process at the time,” he said.

After his wife died in 2004, Wollstein moved to Los Angeles, where he met and married Judy Geller, a former VBS president.

Following in his new wife’s footsteps, Wollstein became active in the synagogue.

In October, he joined the adult b’nai mitzvah class, and says he is now finally learning how to read Hebrew.

This new life “has made me a little more conscious of what it means to be a Jew,” he said.

Adults who study to become b’nai mitzvah are often women who didn’t have the opportunity to become a bat mitzvah, partly because the practice was uncommon prior to the 1970s. This year the VBS class features 11 students, three of whom are men. Wollstein is the youngest, and two of his friends, both turning 83 this year, are celebrating their second bar mitzvahs.

When it was his turn to read at the beginning of a recent class, Wollstein opened his binder, revealing his parasha with the words written phonetically above the Hebrew script. He recited his part slowly, taking care to articulate his words, barely infusing his voice with melody but still in key.

“Good,” said Yosi Dresner, who teaches the class twice each week. “A fraction slower, and it’s great.”

Rabbi Ed Feinstein, who will preside over the service with Wollstein and his peers, says people often don’t stop to consider the journey that has preceded a student’s arrival in a b’nai mitzvah class.

“We see an 85-year-old guy, and we say, ‘Yeah, he’s an old guy.’ [But] you don’t realize that guy has history, a story,” he said.

When Wollstein has his second bar mitzvah during Passover, Feinstein said, “it’s a chance for us to get to know him again.”