A Rite of Passage for an Extraordinary Young Man

MONROE — The road to his bar mitzvah is not an easy one for a Jewish boy.

He has to attend Hebrew school for at least four years, read the Torah, prepare a sermon and lead his own bar mitzvah before the congregation.

“It’s pretty rigorous, even for a regular 13- year-old,” said Rabbi Eliezer Zaklikovsky of the Chabad Jewish Center of Monroe.

Fourteen-year-old Jesse Martinez is not a traditional student. He was diagnosed with autism at the age of 3. But that didn’t stop him from celebrating a bar mitzvah “tailor made” for him on Saturday.

Jesse was called up before the Torah at the temple and gave the blessings, before someone took over and did the readings.

“It was incredible,” Zaklikovsky said Sunday. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”

Jesse’s mother, Sari Yates, did not want her son to be deprived of the Jewish rite of passage into adulthood.

“He’s a Jewish boy,” Yates said. “I grew up in a Jewish family. Having a bar mitzvah is a very important rite of passage. Even though he has autism, it’s his right to go through this. It means a lot to us.”

Jesse was diagnosed with autism when he was a toddler back in 1999. Sari knew something was wrong before that. Jesse didn’t speak. But even in 1999, pediatricians weren’t always attuned to the disorder, she says.

“I was told I was a hysterical mother,” Yates said. “I knew there was something not right with my child. He was staying a baby for a lot longer. He didn’t want to engage with other people. He was very happy just playing by himself.”

When she first got the diagnosis, Yates was crushed.

“It was the most devastating thing I ever went through,” she said. “I had a friend once say, ‘What does it feel like to have a child diagnosed with autism?’And I said, ‘What do you think it feels like?’ … It’s almost like being in mourning, for the child you had in your dreams.”

But Yates doesn’t feel that way anymore.

“I’ve learned to embrace what he can do, whatever he can do, and I’m always optimistic for the future,” she said. “I don’t believe his diagnosis is what defines him.”

Yates held off on trying to find a Hebrew school that would accept her son until he was 12, when she thought he was ready. But it was not easy finding a school that would take him. He couldn’t speak clearly or carry on a conversation.

“A lot of people don’t understand about special needs,” Yates said. “I’m so grateful the Chabad did this. They got no help from anybody.”

When the Zaklikovskys heard about Jessie, there was no question about what to do.

“We basically embrace him,” Zaklikovsky said. “This is a special child. A special child needs to have special attention. We weren’t going to let this opportunity pass.”

Zaklikovsky’s wife, Chanie, taught Jesse during his time at the school; so did Brittany O’Brien, a teacher’s aide.

Jesse would sit in on regular classes, and Chanie Zaklikovsky and O’Brien would then design activities for him based on the regular schoolwork. He learned seven of the 24 Hebrew letters and practiced his prayers, she said.

“I didn’t have very high expectations,” Chanie Zaklikovsky said. “But when he came for his practice on Wednesday, he was able to do the whole prayer.”

Yates, a single mother, has raised Jesse by herself almost since his birth. The boy’s father was not involved in Jesse’s life since he was an infant, and has more recently passed on, she said.

But Jesse didn’t lack for strong men in his life. Yates’ father and her brother, Scott, filled in the void. Scott Yates was Jesse’s godfather.

“I have the best family in the world,” Yates said. “My brother was like a substitute father for Jesse. He was the one who was so proud of the fact we were going to send Jesse to Hebrew school.”

But Scott Yates wasn’t there to see Jesse on Saturday. He died suddenly in 2008 of a heart attack at age 51, one year after Sari’s father died. That left Sari and her mother, Roberta, to carry on.

It was a rough year for Yates, as she dealt with the loss of her father and brother, and she wasn’t able to work that year as a registered nurse.

“I could not pay tuition for Hebrew school,” she said. “They gave me a complete, full scholarship.”

But these days, she’s back at work at the Dover Woods residential health care facility in Toms River. She’s also working toward her bachelor’s degree in nursing.

“I decided to get a more advanced degree,” she said. “It’s something I’ve always wanted.”

Jesse’s autism may have prevented him from leading a bar mitzvah service or looking forward to a “normal” adult life, but it does come with its gifts, Zaklikovsky said.

“Due to his limitations, he’s less involved in the materialistic, physical world, with everything that goes along with it — negative behavior, negative feelings,” the rabbi said. “What a normal person is subjected to and is challenged by, he is above it all. All he does is love everybody. He’s on a much higher spiritual plane than some of us. You won’t see him hitting or hurting someone. In a sense, he’s closer to God than we are. He needs to work less on refining himself than one normally would have to do.”

And unlike some autistic children, Jesse is not violent or hard to control, his mother says.

“He doesn’t have a violent bone in his body,” Yates said. “He’s as sweet as sugar. He just wants kisses all the time.”