The ads on the street announced the donation of a Torah scroll to help a 13-year-old boy reach Bar Mitzvah age. The variety of the ads - and the fact that this time the book was not donated to a cause, brought me to the donation of the Torah scroll.
Last night, in the afternoon, I arrived in the Ramot Eshkol neighborhood in Jerusalem. Indeed, this is not a routine Torah offering for the soul of a father or mother. This is a Torah offering written with sweat, labor, and many tears for a special child, a child who has reached the burden of mitzvot.
Haim Yitzhak was born 13 years ago in London, two months before his estimated due date, with a lack of oxygen at birth and meningitis. In professional language, Haim Yitzhak was born with CP. Brother of Shlomo Zalman who was diagnosed a few months earlier as autistic.
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A few years ago, Deborah Leah immigrated to Israel with her three children, whom she is raising alone, after there was no professional support or framework for her children in London. Mentally, his mother, Deborah Leah Kibman, describes Haim Yitzhak as like a three-year-old, disabled, and confined to a wheelchair.
Last Rosh Hashanah, Chaim Yitzhak was hospitalized in intensive care due to pneumonia that became complicated. On the eve of Simchat Torah, he was released with a feeding tube attached to his stomach. Deborah Leah, who could not bear the great suffering of her little son, and did not want to endure the new ordeal that had befallen her, sought, together with her sister, to do something great for Chaim Yitzhak.
Thus was born the idea of introducing a Torah scroll and a Bar Mitzvah.
The very next day, her neighbor voluntarily built a website - to raise funds, in which she tells the story of her son's special life. There was a lot of opposition from those around her, and only her brothers and sisters supported her throughout.
With the help of social media and word of mouth, she managed to raise donations from all over the world, and reveal her special story to more people in the world. Many good people joined in to help, and she collected shekel by shekel until she reached her goal. "Although I did put in the Torah scroll," says Deborah Leah, "there are still some debts left from the last payments for the Torah scroll," she says when I ask if she managed to raise the entire amount in such a short time. "Our debts are not that large, but for me it is very much from my hearsay and it is about an amount of $5,000, and of course whoever donates - I would be very happy to make it easier for me and share the mitzvah with them.""
In apparent miracles, within three weeks of the moment she began raising donations, Deborah Leah removed the feeding tube from Chaim Yitzhak's stomach.
Why did you connect this with the Bar Mitzvah? Wouldn't it be possible to have a Torah scroll knesset without a Bar Mitzvah?
I strongly believe that a child should be treated as if he were a normal child, even if he sometimes doesn't understand. If his siblings had it, why shouldn't he?! And in general, I believe that it is a milestone for him and something inside him will be affected by it. It may sound cliché, but a child like that doesn't need too much explaining. Everything related to holiness, and especially the Torah scroll, he immediately understands and grasps. Right when we started the fundraising campaign for the Torah scroll and shared it with him, he started singing all the Simchat Torah songs.
Every day I would approach him and say: "Haim Yitzhak, who does the Torah belong to? Who are we going to do a Bar Mitzvah for?" At first he didn't understand that it had to do with him, but every time I would approach him and ask him, I started to see the excitement.
On the day of the event, he was sitting in the stairwell, and suddenly he started to burst into tears, he cried and cried, it was impossible to stop the excitement, and no eye could remain dry in front of such a spectacle. He was really moved and understood the situation he was in.
Under the canopy, while singing and dancing, with a Torah scroll next to him, he simply didn't stop singing, dancing, and clapping. Suddenly I realized that he had simply grown up overnight.
Originally, the book was supposed to be donated to the organization 'Refuah Yishua', which has been with me like family since the moment I arrived in Israel. The Torah scroll was eventually donated to the Chabad Torat Emet Yeshiva on Hana Street in Jerusalem, where the head yeshiva, Rabbi Reuven Boroshansky, accompanied us and accompanies me and my family who live next door to him.
Has the question ever occurred to you as to why you were given two such special children?
Not for a moment! And never! On the contrary, I thank God every moment for the fact that I was blessed to have two such special children. Symbolically, the introduction of the Torah scroll was precisely in Parashat HaKhat, which is actually the weekly Parashat in which all the commandments and prohibitions that we do not understand are written, and in any case, because of our faith, we keep them even without understanding.
Deborah Leah's siblings came from all over the world to celebrate the special Knesset of the Torah scroll with their sister and nephew. Her brother, singer Shlomo Simcha, accompanied the grand celebration.
I stood at the Torah scroll entrance, moved, awed, and filled with tears of excitement, pain, and a lot of appreciation for such a special woman. Many women have done their best, and Deborah Leah Kibman surpassed them all.
