At 89, Sun City's Minnie Levine celebrates a Bat Mitzvah

A stack of books sits across from Minnie Levine at the kitchen table in her Sun City Hilton Head home. The 89-year-old former school teacher spends a lot of time reading. She's even part of a book club.

But she says the book she's never read is the Torah.

"It was my people's gift to the world, and I'm embarrassed to say I don't know it," Levine said. "I have not read it or studied, and now that is my desire to do so."

Levine hopes to soon participate in a Torah study and a class about Kabbalah at her temple, Temple Oseh Shalom in Bluffton. Brought up in a nonreligious Jewish household in the Bronx, N.Y., Levine heard stories of the atrocities her parents experienced before moving from Russia to the United States.

"They were not religious, but they were very Jewish," Levine said about her parents. "They wanted me to know my roots and to be proud of my heritage, which I was and am."

Levine's mother, Raisa Tillow, said she would never forget what she witnessed during a pogrom in Russia. A pogrom is an organized, violent riot directed against a particular ethnic or religious group. In the Tillows' case, it was a group of Cossacks attacking Jews in the early 1900s.

Tillow told her daughter she watched the Cossacks commit murderous acts, some against newborns. And Levine's father, Joseph Tillow, was left with a scar on his face after being attacked.

But the Tillows were able to escape the pogrom. And when they came to the United States shortly after the incident, they felt like they were in Heaven.

"They lived through a depression and many things, but these were things everybody was going through," Levine said. "They were not being persecuted because they were Jews."

And Raisa, whose mother was a victim of Arab terrorism, made sure to teach her children the importance of belonging to something that identifies one's beliefs. Raisa was active in the Zionist movement, and Levine followed in her footsteps. She was financial secretary in the Labor Zionist movement for many years and president of the Mount Vernon, N.Y., chapter of Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, for six years.

When Levine moved to Sun City Hilton Head and joined Temple Oseh Shalom in Bluffton, she decided it was time to identify herself further by going through Bat Mitzvah, which she did last month. She said it meant a lot to her to go through the coming of age ritual, and she feels as though she did a double Mitzvah since her late husband, Yates Levine, did not get to do so before losing his battle with cancer in 1990.

Rav. Bob Wiener, former spiritual leader of Temple Oseh Shalom and instructor of the Bat Mitzvah class, said Minnie is one of the strongest people he knows.

She's been through a lot lately. Just this year, she had a lumpectomy and an eye operation. But just as her parents did all those years ago, Minnie keeps pushing forward.

"I've had many vicissitudes, but I keep going," Levine said. "My philosophy in life is, 'Think positive,' and then I do."