Nine months after he was critically injured at Meron and designated as the “youngest injured Meron survivor,” Elazar Berger celebrated his bar mitzvah last week – from afar.

Sadly, Elazar is not stable enough to attend his own bar mitzvah and instead watched the event via Zoom from the Alyn rehabilitation center in Jerusalem.

The bar mitzvah, which became a community-wide event was sponsored by the Jerusalem municipality.

Elazar watched his friends celebrate a siyum on Mishnayos in his honor. “He smiled and cried from excitement the whole evening,” one of the guests told B’Chadrei Chareidim.

Elazar’s father, Dov, a resident of the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood of Jerusalem, spoke about the agony of the occasion to Kan News: “It was extremely difficult to see him like this,” he said. “And it was hard to go to his bar mitzvah when he couldn’t even attend the event celebrated in his honor.”

Elazar is paralyzed and doesn’t speak. “As long as he doesn’t speak, it’s hard for us to know what’s going through his head,” Dov said. “But for various reasons, we think that he didn’t suffer serious cognitive damage.”

After Elazar was crushed under the crowd of people at Meron, he was the first victim to be evacuated to the hospital. He spent a month at the ICU at Rambam Hospital in Haifa before being transferred to Alyn.

The family has asked the public to continue davening for Elazar ben Raumah l’refuah sheleimah b’toch sha’ar cholei Yisrael.

Another Meron survivor, the most seriously injured victim, is still hospitalized in very serious condition. His family, olim from the US who live in Ramat Beit Shemesh, have also asked the public to daven for the refuah sheleimah of Yosef Ezriel ben Chaya Michal b’otoch shaar cholei Yisrael.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)