Bar Mitzvah

October 31, 1996 MetroWest Jewish News
by Alla C. Ramer MWJN Editorial Assistant

Gerald Chirnomas was supposed to have been dead 13 years ago.

But against all odds, the rabbi sat down last week in the sunroom of his Booton home to talk about becoming bar mitzvah the second time around - celebrating 13 "found years" doctors said he'd never have.

On Nov. 1, 1983 Chirnomas, on his way to performing what would have been another of many britot that day, was driving in heavy traffic in a westbound lane on Route 280. But a utility dump truck was backing up from the grass median to the lane in front of him. With cars to the right, the rabbi's car skidded and slid beneath the truck, trapping him; he lay across the seat with his car door folded over him.

Thirteen years later, Chirnomas, a well-known mohel in MetroWest, is preparing for the Nov. 16 bar mitzvah ceremony. He tell the accident story with a smile on his face. It took rescuers " a good 45 minutes to cut me out of the car" using the "Jaws of Life" the West Orange Police Department had acquired just a week earlier.

When he arrived a Livingston's Saint Barnabas Medical Center, "They knew I was not going to make it...but, thank God, they continued to try."

Chirnomas, who calls his doctors "wonderful", says it took three days to stabilize him; he remained in a coma for a week.

When Tina Chirnomas, then Tina Shimerine, arrived that first night, the doctor "told me, 'I'm really sorry, I really can't offer you hope.'" She says she knew better. "I knew he wasn't dying. There was no way."

Chirnomas' future wife - his family initially told the hospital state she was his sister since only family is permitted in the intensive care unit - hardly left his side. Throughout the whole episode, she says "I promised God I would do certain things if he would be okay, and I'm not going back on any of my promises."

The two, who had dated for seven years, were married exactly six months after the accident in front of 468 "of our closest friends and relatives...There was not a dry eye in the place," says Tina Chirnomas. After all, "he was supposed to be dead."

Chirnomas, 57, who frequently told his family he wanted a bar mitzvah ceremony in 1996, didn't make plans until just a few weeks ago. "I always thought he was kidding," says his wife, smiling at the man she calls "my best friend."

But she is glad that he was serious. "We like to have parties, we like freilach," and what better reason to have a party?

"I am grateful to the Lord for being here and for the extra years I was granted," Chirnomas says, and adds how he lives life with more appreciation "and I do take vacations now" about once a year.

Even though he sustained a broken hip that may have to be replaced in the future, Tina Chirnomas says, "He can still out-walk me on a trip to Europe."

The rabbi considers himself lucky. "Even when you have an accident, you have to have luck," he says, and he was lucky that the accident happened near a hospital "with a very good trauma unit".

The couple's four children, two grandchildren and other family members will join him when he is called to the Torah to read the parsha Toldot at Adat Israel Congregation in Booton, a shul of some 30 families located on the rabbi's property. The last-minute planning turned out to be serendipitous; The parsha is the same one that was read the week of the accident.

In a conversation with Rabbi Alvin Marcus of West Orange and the late Rabbi Alexander Shapiro, towards the end of the hospital stay, Chirnomas mentioned that he was on his way to perform a brit when the accident occured. Quoting the Talmud, Chirnomas says that when someone is en route to perform a mitzvah, "nothing will happen to you." Marcus "told me, 'maybe that's why you're still here'" .... "I'll buy that."

"I was given a new lease on life", he says. "These are found years for me."

If you have questions about BRIT MILA, email me at RebMohel@RabbiChirnomas.com