Raised as a Muslim, Bar Mitzvah Boy is Called to the Torah

Born as Hassan in an Arab neighborhood, thirteen-year-old Yaron’s journey back to Yiddishkeit began after a dramatic rescue by Yad L’Achim. As he recited the brachos at his Bar Mitzvah, there was no dry eye in the room.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the house last Thursday when 13-year-old Yaron was called up to the Torah and, in an Arabic accent, recited the blessings of the Torah.

“This is literally the fulfillment of the possuk ‘And they returned from the land of the enemy,’ ” the Rav of the shul whispered excitedly to the Yad L’Achim activists in attendance, as the boy delivered his dvar Torah at the seudas mitzvah.

Yaron’s story begins 20 years ago, seven years before he was born. His mother, Dikla (a pseudonym), had grown up in a poor neighborhood in Jaffa, a mixed Jewish-Arab city, where she met a young Arab at the local high school who took advantage of her distress to develop a relationship with her.

A few years later, she converted to Islam and married him in a Sharia court. Her shocked parents responded by cutting off all contact with her, in the hope that this would prompt her to return to Judaism.

Three years after the wedding, Yaron was born, and given the Muslim name Hassan. Dikla’s parents did not know about the birth of their grandson; apart from the dismal “regards” they occasionally received from family friends who’d met their daughter, wearing a veil at the local market, they knew nothing about her.

When Yaron was three years old, the first crisis erupted. Dikla wanted to enroll him in a mixed school where Jews study alongside Arabs, but her husband refused. “He is Muslim and needs to grow up as a Muslim,” he said. “A mixed school will confuse him.”

Dikla was deeply hurt. She reminded her husband that he had also studied in a mixed school, but when she pressed her case she was severely beaten. From that day on, their relationship deteriorated and Dikla realized, too late, that she had made a terrible mistake.

After several months of unbearable hardship, she turned to Yad L’Achim. A few weeks later, when she was ready to take the courageous step, she was rescued in the dead of night with her son and brought to a secure safe house, furnished and stocked by the organization.

The professionals at Yad L’Achim helped Dikla gradually reunite with her family. However, out of concern for her safety, she and her son were moved to a small town in the north of the country, far from Yaffo, where her husband and his family lived.

As part of her effort to begin a new chapter in her life, Dikla reconnected to her Judaism. She began observing basic mitzvos and enrolled her son in a Torah school. Little Hassan also underwent a “hatafas dam bris” ceremony, where he was given the Jewish name Yaron.

The boy who emerged as a Muslim from an Arab neighborhood in Jaffa eagerly embraced the values of Judaism. Despite the Arabic accent that he has difficulty hiding, anyone who sees the religious-looking youth would have no idea that he spent his early years as a Muslim.

At the Bar Mitzvah, his emotional mother said: “This event is a special closing of a circle. Seven years ago I felt that he might be stolen from me at any a moment, and I understood that I had to strengthen my Judaism and give him a Jewish education. When he became a Bar Mitzvah and committed himself to keeping mitzvos, I knew that he belonged to the people of Israel and that no one would ever tear him away from us.”

The Rav of the shul also spoke at the event. “When Yaron went up to the Torah and said the bracha ‘Who has chosen us from all the nations,’ these words took on a deeper meaning than they do from the mouth of any other Jewish boy who is called up to the Torah here. Only those who witnessed these moments up close, and were familiar with Yaron’s story, could have truly understood the meaning of this special blessing.”