Your Email:

Friend's Email:

Note: (optional)

Subject:

Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/26273/full/26273/determined-four-prove-it-s-never-too-late-for-b-nai-mitzvah/ <br /><br /> <b>Determined four prove it’s never too late for b’nai mitzvah</b> <br /> Friday, June 10, 2005 | by <p>steven friedman </p> <br /><br /><p>When Grace Blum, Irving Grossman, Dulcenea Martinez and Edith Sadewitz became b’nai mitzvah, they davened with the intensity of worshippers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.<br /><br /> Then they celebrated with scores of beaming family members and friends at a festive dessert Kiddush in San Francisco. Included in the crowd were the daughter of Sadewitz’s best friend from grammar school and a Lutheran minister.<br /><br /> What was most unusual about the April 30 ceremony, however, was the age of these enthusiastic b’nai mitzvah. The four friends are all residents of the Jewish Home for the Aged. <br /><br /> While Blum, Grossman, Martinez and Sadewitz skipped the Jewish rite of passage when they were teenagers, there was absolutely no way they’d have missed it now in their twilight years.<br /><br /> “There were no synagogues in Great Falls, Mont., where I grew up, and I didn’t have a Jewish upbringing, no Jewish training,” said Grossman, 91, who worked in the grocery business, Army and Navy surplus, and men’s wear in the Bay Area before he retired. “At age 90, I figured it was as good a time as any to become bar mitzvah.”<br /><br /> Grossman and his three cohorts began studying more than a year ago with the Jewish Home’s chaplain, Rabbi Sheldon Marder, and their very own volunteer tutor, Linda Posner. The students met with Marder and Posner for at least one to two hours twice a week. Their b’nai mitzvah sessions were part of their larger exploration of Bible, Talmud and other parts of the Jewish tradition.<br /><br /> “Sometimes when we’re together,” Posner said earnestly, “it truly feels like we’re in God’s hands.”<br /><br /> The catalyst for the group’s lofty pursuits of acquiring knowledge and reading from the Torah was Blum, a limitless font of Judaic knowledge, whose paternal grandfather taught Talmud and maternal grandmother sold Hebrew books. She said her family would be amazed and surprised that she carried on such a vibrant tradition and turned out to be so Jewishly involved. <br /><br /> “It’s been such a pleasure to study together,” said Blum, 75, raised in New York and New Jersey. “I hope there is so much more.”<br /><br /> Educational and professional pursuits have always been a part of Dulcenea Martinez’s life. She was a dental assistant, president of the Colorado Dental Assistants Association, and later became a licensed cosmetologist, opening a Bay Area beauty business. But she vowed to become a bat mitzvah shortly after she joined San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El in 1972 and began taking lessons with Rabbis Brian Lurie and Joseph Asher.<br /><br /> “Becoming a bat mitzvah gives me an opportunity to open doors to more advanced learning,” said Martinez, 77, born in a mining camp in Ramey, Colo. “Time was a-wasting so I had to get with it.”<br /><br /> Sadewitz, like Martinez, had a connection to Judaism but never imagined having a bat mitzvah ceremony. Her maternal grandfather was a Jewish teacher, her father was a tailor and her family kept kosher. She also volunteered with Hadassah.<br /><br /> “I said, ‘Me? Forget it.’ I didn’t think at my age it would be possible,” said Sadewitz, 84. “But Rabbi Marder put it in my head that it would be possible.” <br /><br /> Sadewitz came to California as a baby, started working before World War II and held jobs in Kansas, Missouri, New Jersey, and on Wall Street in New York City. Sadewitz, who once set a course record at the River Vale Country Club in New Jersey, said the most magical aspect of the b’nai mitzvah service was wearing her husband’s tallit. <br /><br /> “He wore it in 1929. I carried it with me across the miles from New Jersey after 47 years of marriage. I never thought I would say, ‘from his shoulders to my shoulders in 2005.’ What a wonderful blessing.”<br /><br /> All the students said the blessing was possible due to their fervent training with Marder and Posner. Posner first taught them the Hebrew alphabet and then gradually started to focus in on parts of the Shabbat service. Then they learned their Torah portions in Hebrew.<br /><br /> “We discussed what the portion meant and looked at other texts, such as Maimonides,” Posner said. “I am in love with all the students and every one of them has brought so much to this.”<br /><br /> Added Marder, “It’s very gratifying and inspiring to be with people who are excited and passionate about a commitment that is really life-long. The bar and bat mitzvah of older adults is a profound statement of commitment, identity and belief. It expresses a relationship to God, to the Jewish people, and to one’s immediate community.”<br /><br /> Grossman, who grew up in a town with virtually no Jews and came to the Bay Area as a young boy for treatment of a bone affliction, pondered those words and then offered his own sentiments about the importance of the ceremony. “It was my last chance to call myself a real Jew.”</p> <p> </p>

Please enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below: