This Month's Bar/Bat Mitzvah Story

For some people, “supporting the troops” means putting a bumper sticker on their car. Noah Machlin takes it a lot more seriously than that!

At summer camp, he met an Israeli soldier named Yonatan whose college education had been paid for by a scholarship funded by American families. When it came time to choose a project for his bar mitzvah, Noah knew that, “It had to be for Israeli soldiers.” He wanted to sponsor another soldier’s scholarship. So he teamed up with some other kids from his congregation—Temple Am Shalom in Glencoe—and they gave an IMPACT scholarship to a soldier named Aviv. (IMPACT scholarships are supported by JUF, and you can read more about them here: www.israelsoldiers.org/impact.php.) When they all went to Israel in June, they met Aviv! He was extremely grateful, and said he was going to use the scholarship to study engineering.

Noah loved Israel and had a bar mitzvah ceremony there where he read from the Torah. Then it was time to plan Noah’s bar mitzvah party here, and he wanted to do something for American soldiers. He found out that many of the soldiers in Afghanistan have nothing at all fun to do when they are not on patrol. So now Noah is gathering games, magazines, videos, and sports equipment. He and his friends are going to make care packages of all this fun stuff to send to the soldiers there.

Speaking of fun stuff, Noah collected Legos for most of his childhood. When he was in Israel, he visited a school for kids from poor families. It was part of a service for at-risk children called Youth Futures, which is run by the Jewish Agency for Israel, supported by JUF.

The kids there showed him their break room, which didn’t have a whole lot of toys. So when he got home, he boxed up all his old Legos and sent them to the school! While there, Noah also worked on a mural for the front of the school; he made hamsas and doves out of clay. A “hamsa” is that Israeli symbol that sort of looks like a hand, by the way.

Noah, who does to Glencoe’s Central School, has outgrown his Legos, of course. He is now into building models of more detailed things like planes, boats, and tanks. Noah’s cousin was an airplane mechanic in the Navy, and Noah has long had a very deep appreciation for the people of the armed services: “They fight for our freedom, and other’s freedom. They defend our country, and they have our gratitude for that,” he says. “It’s important that they get what they need.”

Noah has a twin sister, who as you might guess—since she shares a birthday with Noah—is becoming a bat mitzvah herself! Her name is Isabel, and she also had some great mitzvah projects. She is volunteering at a soup kitchen and collecting toiletries for a shelter for the homeless. What great tween twins!

The Israeli school Noah visited was in Kiryat Gat, a city that— along with the neighboring regions called Lachish and Shafir— has a special relationship with JUF called Partnership 2000. Read more about how you can help here: www.juf.org/p2k.