
We want to wish 113-year-old Yisrael Kristal – who happens to be the world’s oldest man and Holocaust survivor living in Israel – a happy bar mitzvah! He will finally get to celebrate this Jewish rite of passage, something that WWI prevented him from doing while he was of the proper age.
Kristal’s daughter, Shulimath Kristal Kuperstoch, told the DPA news agency that about 100 family members will gather in Kristal’s home city of Haifa in the coming weeks to mark the rite.
“We will bless him, we will dance with him, we will be happy,” she said.
Kristal had his birthday last week. He was recognized as the world’s oldest man in March.
He missed his bar mitzvah due to World War I. His father was in the Russian army and his mother had died three years earlier, Kuperstoch said.