Bar Mitzvah Gift: Vegas Show Headlined by Boy With Disabilities

Sometimes what happens in Vegas shouldn’t just stay in Vegas. Levi Harlig’s extraordinary bar mitzvah is one of them. Levi gave a flawless reading of Parshat Naso, the longest Torah portion of the year, and delivered a Chassidic discourse in Yiddish and Hebrew last Shabbat morning at Chabad of Green Valley/Henderson in Las Vegas. The following evening, the 13-year-old sang and drummed for three hours with entertainer Avraham Fried at a community-wide celebration at the Four Seasons Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.

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Autism Is No Barrier for Munich Boy’s Bar Mitzvah

When the Diskin family was contemplating a move from the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., to Munich in the late 1980s, there was no Chabad presence in Germany, the Berlin Wall was still standing, and they were instructed by the Rebbe’s secretary to get their parents’ permission before considering the move. Thirty years later, Rabbi Yisroel and Chana Diskin speak fluent German, provide for the many needs of the diverse Jewish community of Munich and oversee 19 Chabad centers around the country. The Diskins have also been open with the community about the personal and practical challenges they have encountered during the last 13 years with their youngest son, Zalman, a young man with autism and hearing impairments.

The Rabbi Who Pioneered the Jewish Revival of Safed

In Chabad circles, there are no small assignments for the movement’s emissaries, sent near and far to bolster and spread Judaism, often in isolated outposts. But there are some who take on missions of heroic proportion, such as one assigned a young Crown Heights couple in the summer of 1973.