Bar Mitzvah Celebration in the Kibbutz

​

Genigar

1959

On Saturday, 28th Sivan 5719, 1959, the kibbutz celebrated the Bar Mitzvah celebrations for the children who had reached the age - - - on the opening of the celebration Chaim Bavli blessed the kibbutz and gave each of the children a gift from the kibbutz – a watch.

​

With Jews it is customary when reaching the age of 13 they are considered for all intents and purposes as adults and they join the adult community. From now on, they must study hard and they must practice and be educated on how to continue the dynasty of the generations as Jews, with love and obligation, to fulfil that imposed on them at all times and to remember the past of our people during all the generations and times. To remember that we have been raised and educated within the framework of a special framework called the kibbutz. This has special significance and content.

You must from now on study and recognize what this lifestyle obligates you to do. The values by which we live each and every day, the belief in which we live, our lifestyle – this is our religion of work and it leaves its stamp on our behaviour. Believers used to lay phylacteries. Phylacteries on the head and on the arm, on the left arm – close to the heart and this is the symbol for the heart and the head, with feeling and with acknowledgement they united with the creator. You must also be educated with feelings and acknowledgement of those same commandments that our life imposes upon us. You are blessed to have reached this age when commandments can be imposed on you.

And to the parents:

On this day the parents say “blessed am I to be relieved of this punishment”/

I do not think that we need to bless you that you have been relieved but rather that your children have reached this age. In our lives the adolescence of the children does not relieve us but rather the opposite is true, it imposes duties of Jewish and kibbutz education, to introduce the children to the belief with the same excitement by which we live and by the strength of which we have reached this point, according to which we live, so that they will be able to continue what we have started.

And you have bequeathed to me a world, and you have bequeathed to me love and faith. A blessing to the parents and to the members. You are receiving a gift from the kibbutz – watches, not only so that you will look at them and no so that you will wind them up but rather as a symbol of the pulse of life, as a symbol for you that time starts to have a value, for every moment in time.