When I first saw this headline, my immediate reaction was “Jimmy Carter converted to Judaism?!”
But all kidding aside – wow.
The world’s oldest man will have his bar mitzvah 100 years late
The world’s oldest man is due to have his bar mitzvah at the age of 113 – a century later than originally planned.
Yisrael Kristal, a Holocaust survivor living in Israel, was named the world’s oldest living man earlier this year and turned 113 on Thursday.
His family have announced that are planning to hold a bar mitzvah ceremony for him because he missed his original ceremony during the First World War.
Mr Kristal turned 13 in September 1916, while the fighting was still raging across Europe.
His father was away fighting in the Russian army and his mother had died several years earlier, meaning there was no one to preside over his coming of age ritual.
Shulimath Kristal Kuperstoch, his daughter, said that around 100 members of the family planned to gather at his home in Haifa for the much-delayed bar mitzvah celebration.
“We will bless him, we will dance with him, we will be happy,” she told the DPA news agency.
