There was a beautiful, festive bar mitzvah at shul this past Shabbat.

As I sat down in my usual seat, I found myself unexpectedly crying.

I shouldn’t really say unexpectedly…. I cry all the time.

I cry for my children’s war experiences, for the widows and orphans, for reserve soldiers, for the hostages, for the wounded, for the displaced in the South and North, and for those who gave for the country with the ultimate sacrifice.

There is a lot to cry about.

But I wasn’t sure what I was crying about last Shabbat.

Finally, I realized I was crying about the exhaustion of war and about what we experienced at our last bar mitzvah.

Yakir’s bar mitzvah was during the height of the war, In November 2023, and as the date approached it looked like his two oldest brothers wouldn’t be there. And, indeed, they were not.

Not only were they not there, but one of them was so entrenched in Gaza at the time that he didn’t know the date; he didn’t know that he had missed it until he got back home weeks later.

Perhaps even more painfully, the other soldier did know that he was missing it. He was only an hour away, but just couldn’t get to us.

The bar mitzvah (shared with one of Yakir’s best friends) was incredibly intense, meaningful and beautiful.

Realizing this was my pain point, I started to reflect on our other bar mitzvahs. The reflections made me laugh, shake my head in disbelief, and think about a lesson I learned before we even had our first bar mitzvah.

Except for Amichai’s bar mitzvah, we had unexpected “excitement” before each of the simchas. At 3pm on Friday, as Matan’s bar mitzvah Shabbat was about to start in 2013, Amichai ripped open his finger and required stitches. Thankfully, we are friends with an incredible oral surgeon who stitched Amichai up and saved us from an emergency room visit and, potentially, an inability to be at the simcha.

Yehuda’s bar mitzvah in 2015 happened in one of the largest snow storms Neve Daniel had seen in years. My father and brother turned around in New York and never made it; our electricity kept going in and out; our food couldn’t be delivered because no cars could get through the streets. A great friend with a 4×4 saved the day and delivered the food to our door.

A few days before Eliav’s bar mitzvah in 2019, Amichai broke his pelvic bone (I kid you not). He was playing casual soccer with his brothers, fell to the ground in agony, and needed months to recover from this crazy, weird injury.

Zeli’s bar mitzvah in 2021 took place during COVID-19, creating its own craziness, creativity and compromise.

And that brings us back to Yakir’s war bar mitzvah, where he was missing two of his brothers.

When I look at this globally, and put all five experiences together, it’s a bit crazy.

And craziness or coincidences typically make me look to Hashem to try to understand the lesson I’m being offered.

Life events are so exciting, and often very stressful. You want everything to go “just right” and to be exactly as you’ve planned it.

And then reality, and events completely beyond your control, happen.

Ironically, I was taught this lesson in a very painful way before we even had our first bar mitzvah. On October 29, 2012, I wrote the following blog (summarized here):

While out for a walk that night, Josh and I were debating about some of the smaller details of Matan’s bar mitzvah, and I was stressing about them. Suddenly, we learned that there was an injured person not far away. Calling for backup and running to the spot, we heard the emergency services say that there was no pulse. And that he was someone’s kid.

We prayed that they should be given the strength to get through this incredible tragedy. That they should be able to continue on. Much later that evening, I told Josh that the bar mitzvah would be beautiful no matter how it played out as long as we were all there, healthy. The details? Who cared.

What a strange lesson to learn before even having one bar mitzvah.

But it is one that I’ve taken through all six of them, and have held onto during the various complications and crises that we had for five.

I sat in shul this past Shabbat and thanked Hashem for the opportunity to celebrate six beautiful bar mitzvahs – no matter what they looked like and how they evolved. And for me to embrace this lesson as life continues to give us large and small challenges along the way.