A Bar Mitzvah with Rashbi: From the Front Lines to Meron
It wasn’t the kind of Bar Mitzvah you’d expect — no polished speeches, no tuxedos, no catered hall. Just a soldier, a pair of tefillin, and the Kever of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai • Full Story, Watch
Ilia, a 48-year-old IDF reservist stationed along the tense Lebanese border, had never laid tefillin in his life. He never celebrated a Bar Mitzvah. Life moved quickly, and the opportunity simply never came.
That changed when Ilia met Rabbi Baruch Farber, a Chabad shliach serving in reserves. The two struck up a conversation somewhere between the base and the front lines. Ilia casually mentioned he had never done what so many Jewish boys do at age 13. Rabbi Farber paused. “Would you want to put on tefillin?” he asked. Ilia said yes — not out of nostalgia, but out of a quiet desire to reconnect, to claim something he’d never had.
Rabbi Farber sprang into action. He contacted the Chabad Tefillin Center in Tefen, near Karmiel, and arranged for Ilia to receive a beautiful, brand-new pair of tefillin. They made the trip together. But the story didn’t end there.
It was just after Lag BaOmer, and Meron was still teeming with Jews from across the country. Rabbi Farber brought Ilia there — to Rashbi’s Kever — and gave him the Bar Mitzvah he never had.
Surrounded by song, blessings, and strangers who instantly became brothers, Ilia wrapped tefillin for the first time in his life. He was overcome with emotion. “Mazel Tov!” rang out from every direction, and not a few eyes turned misty.
Ilia became the 1,739th soldier to begin laying tefillin through the “Tefillin for Soldiers” project founded by Rabbi Kuti Miydovnik — but his story felt like a first.
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