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MEMORIES from page C20

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Paul Kohn with his

aunt Honey, his broth-

er Tommy and his

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mother Elizabeth at his

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Heights."
. .
He recalls making "one of those

little speeches at an open house,
which he had to repeat four times as
new guests arrived: Above all, he says,
"I don't ever remember feeling that
my bar mitzvah was any less than
friends vvho had very typical
American-type bar mitzvahs:"
Rabbi Amy Bigman also celebrat-
ed in a non-typical \A-Tay. She was
called to the Torah as a bat mitzvah
as an adult. During the same month
she was accepted to rabbinical
school, she participated in a bat mitz-
vah ceremony at age 21.
"I went all through religious school,
was confirmed at Temple Beth El, and
could read Hebrew, but never did the
ceremony" After studying Hebrew at
the University of Michigan, she decid-
ed as a college senior that the time was
right. "Being older than the typical bat
mitzvah student and having a more in-
depth background," she was able to
lead most of the service, which she
called unusual at the time of her
January 1987 service. She found "as an
adult, it was a different experience
than as a kid. You are more involved
than if you were 13."
As congregational rabbi at Temple
Kol Ami in West Bloomfield, she is a
b'nai mitzvah tutor and teacher. She

33

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But at one time, the attention of

the bar mitzvah day was on him.
He has "poignant" memories of the
milestone that occurred four years
after his family arrived in New York
from Hungary. "We davened
(prayed) in a shul where my uncle
had davened, and he had recently
passed away," recalls Kohn. On the
men's side of the mechitza (partition
separating men from women in syn-
agogue), "I felt very orphaned,"
with almost no male relatives, and
his aunt and widowed mother on
the other side of the room.
Remembering the service, he says,
"I can't carry a tune, and God had
the foresight to give me the shortest
haftorah and maftir in the whole

Chumash."

A party in his aunt's apartment
included home-baked challa, "and
cold-cut trays made lovingly by my
mother," who later became a kosher
caterer. "My mother took special
pains to buy special cold cuts made

