As you probably know by now, last week we went to New Jersey for Thanksgiving. We also spent the weekend in the Catskills in New York. We were there to celebrate our nephew’s bar mitzvah, which actually isn’t until January. He is having his bar mitzvah in Israel though, so we all gathered to celebrate him putting on his tefillin for the first time. (Tefillin are “leather pouches containing scrolls with passages of scripture, used to fulfill the commandment to bind the commandments to our hands and between our eyes” that boys begin wearing at the time of their bar mitzvah – age 13). My nephew’s family lives in NJ, but they own an old hotel that they use for family gatherings because otherwise they wouldn’t have room for everyone – there were 43 people there for the weekend!
Why is there a firetruck behind the hotel? Only my brother-in-law can answer that!
Dave took Zachary on the golf cart / ATV. Later he also took me on it!
Those pictures were all taken Friday afternoon. The celebration was ongoing throughout the weekend, with lots of dancing taking place Saturday night!
My kids love their cousins and it makes me so happy that their cousins love them too!
The actual event of my nephew putting on his tefillin for the first time was on Sunday morning. Want to see more pictures? OK!
Now he is ready to put on tefillin every day, just like his father and grandfathers before him. Mazel tov!