No, not the kind of man I became on that drunken night of my 16th birthday.  A JEWISH man!  As some of you may know, I have a bit of a rebellious streak, and so when it came time for all the good little Jewish boys to go to Hebrew school I flat out refused. Thus, I never had a Bar Mitzvah when I was thirteen. Frankly, I never really regretted it. Other than at a few awkward High Holiday moments when it came up in synagogue, or seeing the heartbreak on my in-laws faces when they found out, it hadn’t been much of a factor.

I wasn’t really expecting my time here in the Holy Land to change any of that, either. I knew it would be a great place to find out a bit more about my heritage, and possibly connect on some deeper level, but nothing as drastic as a “mid-life-crisis-bar-mitzvah”. Until I got here. And then it didn’t seem so out of the question anymore. I was discussing the idea of “wouldn’t it be neat if…” with some friends we met here, Katie and Naomi, when Naomi said, “Well, I happen to know the perfect Rabbi!”. Since we were leaving for Jerusalem the next day I figured what the heck, let’s give him a call and see what the situation is.

Rabbi Ezra turned out to be just the man for the job. A hippie Jew about our age, he made me feel very comfortable with the entire process, and assured me that whatever my reasons might be they were mine and mine only, and it was completely my decision. We talked a few times on the phone and then it was time to meet the next day at the flagpole in front of the Kotel (i.e. The Western Wall – the holiest site in Judaism). It was also fitting for this to take place here since my brother was Bar Mitzvah’d in the exact same spot 27 years ago.

I won’t say that it was an intimate affair. The Western Wall is an absolutely crazy place, and there were several Bar Mitzvahs going on at the same time as mine. In fact, we combined mine mid-ceremony with the one next to us so we would have enough men to make a minyan (ten are required). And so I said my prayers, and carried the Torah, and did the blessings. It was such an amazing place for this to happen. Almost as amazing was the lunch we all celebrated with after. I’ll let the video speak for itself. This is just one of those things that is especially hard to put into words. For my gifts, please send checks payable to “Joy Zimmerman Walker”. It all ends up there anyway.