This Month's Bar/Bat Mitzvah Story

Alex Roberts loves to read. So when he heard that the public library in New Orleans was still trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina, he used his bar mitzvah to help.

Alex had guests who came to his celebration at Congregation Beth Shalom of Naperville, which was in May this year, bring a book to donate. He has over 100 books so far, and is still getting more! He also attended a fundraiser for the library, raised hundreds of dollars to send to it, and is donating a third of the money he received as bar mitzvah gifts to it as well.

Alex presented his check at an event in Chicago called the Pilcrow Literary Festival. A “pilcrow” is a symbol an editor uses to tell the writer to start a new paragraph. It’s shaped like a backward “P,” but with two straight lines instead of one:  .

Also at his ceremony, Alex had what is called a “twin.” Not a real twin, like a brother or sister, but someone who cannot celebrate their own bar or bat mitzvah for some reason. Some people “twin” with tweens from countries were Jews are persecuted and not allowed to celebrate Jewish events and holidays.

In Alex’s case, his “twin” was killed, at age 13, in the Holocaust. His name was Sandor Farkas and he lived in Hungary. Amazingly, Alex’s great-grandfather, who also came from Hungary, had the exact same name! “Sandor” is short for “Alexander” (hear it now?) so Alex shares a name with him, too. At Alex’s bar mitzvah, he set aside an empty chair, draped with a tallit, in Sandor’s memory.

But that’s not all Alex did! His class ay the Jay Stream School was raising money for an organization called Heifer International. A heifer is a young female cow. And this organization buys cows, horses, sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, fish, and other animals for poor people all over the world. They serve 125 countries, so depending on where in the world they are helping, they might also get farmers camels, llamas, or yaks, too! Alex donated hundreds of dollars to this very special class project.

Alex lives in Carol Stream. Aside from reading, he love science and is thinking about becoming a physicist. He also plays the sax!

And with his bar mitzvah, he was able to help victims of  a natural disaster in New Orleans, remember a victim of the Holocaust in Hungary, and reach out to victims of poverty worldwide.

The expression is “think globally, act locally,” but sometimes the opposite works just as well!