While on mivtzoim in an old age home, bochur Yaakov Kagan saw a man whom he was sure was non-Jewish. He decided to ask him anyways…
By Anash.org reporter
Even 90 years later is still not too late.
While on mivtzoim in an old age home in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, bochur Yaakov Kagan saw a man whom he was sure was non-Jewish. He decided to ask him anyways…
“I was hanging around in the lobby and, as I was about to leave, I decided to ask an elderly man who was sitting there, even though I thought he was for sure a non-Jew,” Kagan told Anash.org.
It turned out that the man was Jewish, and he had never donned tefillin or celebrated his Bar Mitzvah.
The centenarian told the bochur that he had grown up in a small town in Wisconsin, where his family had been the only Jewish family. As such, they never made him a bar mitzvah, and he had never donned tefillin.
Kagan immediately offered to don tefillin with the man, and he agreed.
So a full nine decades after he was supposed to celebrate his bar mitzvah, a Yid from Wisconsin, who was now in an old age home in a small Chicago suburb, finally got what he had missed.
All thanks to the bochur, who decided he should go ahead and ask…
Beautiful story!
Question, is the post 13 Bar Mitzvah phenomenon, meant to replace what used to be called a Karkafta delo munach Tefilin?
it’s the same thing in english and aramaic
Beautiful! Yasher Koach! In this day and age, in America, it is often quite difficult to tell by appearance, accent, etc. who is a Jew. (45 years ago it was often easier. People had Brooklyn or European accents, and fewer had nose jobs…) On mivtzoyim, we have to have the guts to take a risk and ask anyway, like Yaakov Kagan did.
That’s my son!! keep doing what you do best Bochur!! Bring Moshiach now!!
Wow! Please teach us how you raise such an outstanding child?!