Rosalind Gordon (seen on computer screen) Skypes from Connecticut to her great-grandson Oliver in California.

By Cindy Mindell ~
BRIDGEPORT – Rosalind Gordon was 83 when she first read from the Torah as an adult bat mitzvah at Congregation B’nai Israel in Bridgeport. She read again at 85. A couple of years later, her health began to fail: she was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease; she developed arthritis and found it difficult to walk.
“I said, ‘What can I do? I’ve got to have a goal,’” Gordon recalls. When she realized that her 90th birthday would fall on a Shabbat, she knew she’d identified her next objective.
On Mar. 3, the Bridgeport native and lifelong resident will celebrate her milestone at an early-morning service at B’nai Israel.
“My mother came from Russia and wasn’t much for religion,” Gordon says. “But she was very intellectual in the sense that she loved Jewish history and culture and instilled that in me.” The family belonged to the Workmen’s Circle, where Gordon learned Yiddish.
Gordon grew up within walking distance of Bridgeport’s old Grand Street Synagogue, where she would attend with her friends. She married a man from an Orthodox family and had a son, Jay, who became a bar mitzvah at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in Bridgeport.
“I didn’t have a clue what he was doing,” Gordon says. “I knew Yiddish, but Hebrew’s not the same. “After the service, I dragged the poor boy to a recording studio and had him do the whole service over for me.”
Gordon’s husband, Harold, died suddenly at age 52. “He was my world,” she says. “Whatever he liked, I liked, and whatever he did, I was happy to do. I said to myself, ‘I can’t change what is, but I can take advantage of my disadvantage,’ so I started doing things I liked.” Gordon joined the Jane Austen Society and started traveling.
She began spending time at B’nai Israel a decade ago, when two close friends died, and immediately felt welcome.
“Everybody was very friendly, and they introduced themselves and said, ‘We’re so glad to have you here,”” she says. “I was feeling much better; I went to every class they had available, and to Friday-night and Saturday-morning services, and to every bar and bat mitzvah.”
When an 80-year-old congregant celebrated his bar mitzvah, Gordon decided to follow his lead. She studied with director of family education Elaine Chetrit until she was ready to join an adult b’nai mitzvah class.
“I wanted to give back to the synagogue,” Gordon says. “I decided to do my bat mitzvah at my service of choice – the 8 a.m. one, because you really have to be dedicated to get there – and have a catered breakfast. It was such a high point in my life. One of my friends at the temple said, ‘You glowed.’”
Now she takes intermediate Hebrew classes with four other adult students, who are more like family than classmates. Her friends from water-walking class will come to the March 3 service. “I want them to share in the beauty and to see the joy I get from it,” she says.
And she’ll Skype her great-grandson, Oliver, in California to share the news, as she’s done every week since the boy was born nearly three years ago, on the computer that her two kids bought as a bat mitzvah gift.
There’s a simple reason Gordon is excited to celebrate her 90th year. “When I first asked about reading the Torah three years ago for this birthday, it was in the hope that I would still be alive in 2012 and still be mentally able to do it,” she says. “This is the birthday I’m most excited about because I’ve reached it and am still functioning.”