Since the film about Lior will be coming out very soon, I wanted to post this article from the time of his Bar Mitzvah. Lior is now a straight A student in ninth grade at a Philadelphia public charter school.
A Community Basks In His Light
The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 24, 2004
A boy overcomes disability to celebrate bar mitzvah.
By Kristen A. Graham, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff (Reprinted with permission)
His name means my light, and to the community of people who love him, he is that. He prays with such intensity and spirit, and with such frequency and concentration and joy, that some call him "the little rebbe," or rabbi.
He has Down syndrome. Even so, shortly after his 13th birthday, Lior Liebling did what many young Jewish boys could not do - lead an intense, three-hour coming-of-age service.
It is no wonder, then, that Lior's bar mitzvah was one of the most joyous days Congregation Mishkan Shalom has ever seen. In a way, the Mount Airy boy had prepared for May 15 his whole life.
Mordechai Liebling first noticed his son's gift for davening - praying - when the boy was perhaps 3. Even at that age, Lior would bow and sway, an enthusiast in a prayer shawl that friends had hand-made for him. He would wake up and ask, "Is it Shabbas?," so hopeful that each day would be the Jewish sabbath.
Lior was the third of four children born to Liebling, a prominent rabbi and for years the director of the Jewish Reform Foundation, and Rabbi Devora Bartnoff. The boy's spirituality surprised even his learned parents.
Bartnoff died of breast cancer when Lior was 6. Yoni, the second child, was 10 at the time.
"I was completely lost," Yoni recalls of his mother's death in 1997. "But soon after, I got a huge hug from Lior and realized that things weren't going to be so bad with this guy by my side."
Lior has that effect on people. Ilana Trachtman picked up on it right away. A New York producer and filmmaker, she met the Lieblings at a prayer retreat last year and was struck by this loud, off-key, completely absorbed voice praying with her.
She met with Liebling and Lynne Iser, Lior's adored stepmother, who had been looking for someone to tell the boy's story on film. Everyone agreed Trachtman was the person to do it.
"I didn't make a conscious decision," she said. "I just ended up doing this. I'm maxing out my credit cards. My apartment has become a production office."
The film will be called Praying With Lior. She still needs financing, but Trachtman is confident that it will fall into place. Mishkan Shalom, the family's Manayunk synagogue, made a rare exception to allow filming during Shabbat morning service, and the film crew has blended into the family over months of shooting. "It never occurred to me that we need to include somebody for our sake - that they benefit from it, but we do, too," Trachtman said. "To me, Lior is like a metaphysical puzzle - here's a person with mental handicaps, but who has this enlightened soul."
May 15 dawned sunny and sticky, but Lior was immune to the heat, the cameras and the pre-service fussing and assembling of hundreds of people. Lengthy and largely in Hebrew, Lior's bar mitzvah was a happy, holy festival: There were drums and tambourines, dancing and hugs when Lior and his parents walked the Torah around the room.
Two years of deliberate practice showed: Lior's voice was certain. He was careful not to go too fast or look down too much. During the davening, his body rocked. His eyes shut halfway. He looked serious and did not stumble over the difficult Hebrew sounds. "Today, you say, 'I am ready to carry your prayers on my shoulders and in my heart,' " Rabbi Yael Levy told Lior. "Aren't we a lucky community? We know you can do it. We know you can carry those prayers."
When it was time for his d'var Torah, his speech, the packed synagogue sat forward. "I am thankful for my mommy, Devora, because she is always in my heart, davening with me," Lior said, as congregants grabbed for tissues. Using the Hebrew word for God, he said, "My heart is full of Hashem when I daven. I talk to Hashem when I am davening. I like talking to Hashem. I feel happy, excited! I love davening. It gives me energy, gives me power, and makes me strong."
Perhaps, his parents remarked later, Lior's proudest moment was when his Mishkan Shalom name tag - the sign he had fully joined the community - was draped around his neck. "It was a highlight of his young life," Iser said. "It wasn't about getting things. For Lior, it was, 'I got to lead and join the community.' "
The celebration afterward was equally joyous. Face alight, shirt untucked, Lior whirled on the dance floor. When family and friends sat him in a chair and lifted him high, he gripped the sides but never stopped smiling.
Below the ballroom where the party blasted on, family and friends trooped in, sat in front of a camera, and spoke to Lior. People talked about how his singing frees them to sing a little louder. About how he centers them on what's important - happiness, letting go, touching others. They said he was a role model, a teacher.
Rabbi Marsha Pik-Nathan was a friend of Lior's mother and father at rabbinical school and has watched him blossom. "This is his thing," she said. "He prays. He's found a way to be in the world instead of being apart from the world. He's really everybody's love." Bobbie Breitman, a longtime Lior supporter, said that praying with him "gave me answers to questions I hadn't even asked," she said. "What today is is such a triumph of love over loss."
