British Ambassador Tom Phillips welcomed 13 boys from Ohr Simcha, a Chabad-Lubavitch run orphanage and boarding school in central Israel, to his official residence last week for a mass Bar Mitzvah celebration with Minister of Welfare and Social Services Yitzhak Herzog in attendance.
Phillips first visited the Kfar Chabad school in 2006, meeting two brothers there who had arrived from the United Kingdom. Touched by the visit, he hosted the older brother’s Bar Mitzvah, and resolved to host the younger brother’s as well, this time with all of his classmates.