Jewish News Syndicate – Rosh Hashanah Sermon About Jewish Pride After Ukraine Immigrants Celebrate Quad Bar Mitzvah

Rabbis to offer sermons on everything from AI to Ukraine on High Holidays

Excerpt from JNS (Jewish News Syndicate) Article by Sergio Carmona

In his sermons, Miller intends to talk about his experience working with bar and bat mitzvah students, and how their commitment to continuing their Jewish heritage encourages him.

He plans to talk about an experience he had when he officiated at a bar mitzvah ceremony for four boys at once. The four, who are friends and live in West Bloomfield, are all first-generation Americans whose parents immigrated from the former Soviet Union.

“It’s a very powerful story,” he said.

Miller’s sermon will also be about Jewish pride and heritage. “Forty years ago, Jews in the former Soviet Union couldn’t celebrate a bar mitzvah, and now these same Jewish people are celebrating their grandson’s bar mitzvah,” he told JNS.

“I’m going to tie that into the current war between Russia and Ukraine,” the rabbi added. “I think that American Jews should be doing more for the Jewish community in Ukraine during the war.”

Source: https://www.jns.org/jewish-and-israeli-holidays/sermons/23/9/5/316465/

Rabbi Jason Miller holds a Torah written by a scribe in Ukraine, from where the parents of all four of the bar mitzvah celebrants emigrated: (from left) Aaron Gendelman, Ari Raykinstein, Nolan Johnston and Aiden Kotikovsky. Credit: Evis Mecolli/Visi Productions.