Alexa’s Bat Mitzvah at The Neshamah Institute | Vayeitzei & Waiting for the Dream

Some Torah portions ask us to move forward. Alexa’s asked her to wait, and that turned out to be exactly the lesson she needed.

A Ladder, a Dream, and a Question Worth Asking

Alexa’s Torah portion was Vayeitzei, “and he went.” It tells the story of Jacob leaving home for a place called Charan, stopping for the night, and dreaming of a ladder stretching from earth to heaven with angels moving up and down its rungs. Later in the portion, Jacob falls in love with Rachel, but is tricked into marrying her sister first. He has to wait years before he finally marries the woman he loves.

Alexa did something I love watching students do. She asked a real question of the text. If angels come from heaven, she wondered, why does her portion describe them going up the ladder first? Her answer, worked out through study, was that the angels ascending were the angels assigned to the Land of Israel, returning home, and only then did new angels descend to guide Jacob on his journey.

From there, Alexa drew her own conclusion: sometimes we have to wait a long time before our dreams come true, just as Jacob waited for Rachel. Standing on the bimah, she named what that meant for her. Becoming a Bat Mitzvah, she said, is its own kind of new chapter, one filled with responsibility, growth, and faith. Being Jewish, she told us, isn’t only about what she receives from her family or community. It’s also about what she contributes to it.

Carrying What Came Before Her

Alexa built her service around L’dor Vador, from generation to generation. For her, that phrase means Judaism was never only about her. It’s about the people who came before and the people who will come after. She spoke about carrying forward the values she has learned from her family, her teachers, and her dance instructors: kindness, responsibility, and a love of learning. Lighting candles at Hanukkah with her family is one tradition she named specifically as something she plans to pass down to her own children and grandchildren one day.

Even her connection to the Shema was personal and specific. Alexa is a competitive dancer, and she told us that before she performs, nerves and all, she turns to prayer. The Shema’s message that we come from One God is, for her, a source of steadiness in exactly those moments.

Remembering Eva Brettler

The part of Alexa’s service that stayed with me most was her Holocaust remembrance. In preparing for her Bat Mitzvah, Alexa learned about Eva Brettler, a Holocaust survivor born in Transylvania on November 29, 1936. Alexa was born on November 29 as well, seventy-six years later, and she felt that connection deeply.

She told Eva’s story with real care: a childhood sheltered from the Nazis at first, deportation to Ravensbrück at age seven where her mother did not survive, transfer to Bergen-Belsen, and liberation by British troops in 1945, a day Eva later described as a rebirth. As an adult, Eva volunteered at the Museum of Tolerance, sharing her story so that others would remember. She died in February 2023 at eighty-six.

Alexa reminded our community that a Bat Mitzvah isn’t only about reading and reciting prayers. It’s also a chance to honor those who kept going through the hardest times, and to make sure six million stories are never forgotten.

Watching Alexa hold that history with such seriousness, and then turn around and thank her nana, her brother, and her dance teachers with so much warmth, told me everything about who she is becoming. She is someone who can carry weight and joy in the same hands.

Mazal tov, Alexa. Like Jacob, you waited, you climbed, and you arrived exactly where you were meant to be.

With love and blessings,

Rabbi Amy

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