Jerusalem – The world’s oldest man, who turned 113th on Thursday, plans to mark his birthday by celebrating his bar mitzvah in the Israeli city of Haifa about a century too late, his daughter told DPA news agency.
About 100 family members are expected to attend his belated bar mitzvah, which is expected to take place in the coming weeks, his daughter Shulimath Kristal Kuperstoch said.
“We will bless him, we will dance with him, we will be happy,” she said.
Yisrael Kristal, who was handed his title in March by Guinness World Records, missed his chance to celebrate the traditional Jewish coming-of-age ritual at the usual age of 13 due to World War I.
“When my father was 13, it was World War I, his father was in the Russian army and his mother had died three years before. No one celebrated this moment,” according to Kristal Kuperstoch.
Kristal was born on September 15, 1903, in the Polish village of Zarnow. He was deported to Auschwitz in 1944 and lost his first wife and two children in the Holocaust. He emigrated to Israel in 1950 and now has two children, multiple grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
As reported by Vos Iz Neias