Word: joshed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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AUNTS, UNCLES AND COUSINS from faraway places came to celebrate the last bar mitzvah of the generation. Balloons danced in the early summer air. That morning Josh Maisel, then 13, entered Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, Me., as a child, and he emerged, in the eyes of his faith, a man. Serious duties replaced the weightlessness of his younger years. As a child, Josh had listened to Scripture and learned; as an adult, Josh is allowed to read from the Torah so that he can pass on his family's faith to a new generation...
...Josh is astute enough to understand that his bar mitzvah was more a ceremonial aspiration than a sudden transformation. Between childhood and adulthood lies the ridiculous and treacherous territory of adolescence. It is a region full of dangers, brainless impulses, hormonal furies. And it must be crossed...
...Josh has just successfully passed one milestone in the process: his freshman year of high school. His still boyish face is framed by a square- edged haircut. Josh has always been small for his age. That bothers him but does not slow him down. Barely 5 ft. tall, he competes in a sport of giants: his ambidextrous dribbling helped him become starting point guard on the ninth-grade basketball team at Belmont High School in suburban Boston...
Childhood has not been an easy path for Josh. He will never forget the night nearly nine years ago when his parents told him they were divorcing. "My sister Dana and I really liked watching the TV show Mork and Mindy, so my parents decided to tell us right before the show so we could watch it afterward," he says. "I don't think we ever got around to watching it. I just remember crying...
...grew older, Josh's pain subsided, but he knew that his life would never be the same again. "It just takes time," he says. Time, and a sense that he was not going through this alone. "A couple of years later, my best friend's parents got divorced. Then a lot of other kids' parents got divorced. I guess when it happened to me, it was just starting." When asked about his greatest worry as a child, Josh replied, somewhat absently, "War. It's scary to think what could happen." But at the mention of his parents' divorce, Josh adds...