[Avodah] Bar Mitzvah at the Age of 12

[Zev Sero via Avodah]

On 20/05/17 05:14, David Havin via Avodah wrote:
> My maternal grandfather, who lived in Lithuania until his late teens, 
> told me on a number of occasions that he celebrated his bar mitzvah when 
> he was 12 years old, as his father had died and he was considered to be 
> an orphan.
> 
> Some years ago I recalled this and decided to learn more about the 
> custom, but each of the rabbis I asked had never heard of it.  Recently, 
> however, I was re-reading A Tzadik in Our Time: The Life of Reb Aryeh 
> Levin and, at page 95, he recounts that he attended a bar mitzvah of an 
> orphan in Jerusalem on his 12^th birthday.
> 
> Does anyone know anything of this custom?

There is, of course, no such custom of becoming a bar mitzvah early. 
But it was a common custom that a child with no father would begin 
putting on tefillin a full year before his bar mitzvah, rather than a 
few weeks or months as is the usual custom.  See Aruch Hashulchan 37:4, 
who says this is "murgal befi hahamon", but he knows of no reason for 
it, and disapproves of it.

See: http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=374&pgnum=295


-- 
Zev Sero                May 2017, with its *nine* days of Chanukah,
zev at sero.name           be a brilliant year for us all