Just three months after World War II ended, Mikhail Lovich turned 13, but the bar mitzva-aged boy was in no place to have a ceremony.

A native of Russia, Lovich was sent to Siberia with his family in 1942 by the Soviet authorities after surviving the 900-day blockade of Leningrad by Nazi Germany. In Siberia, there were no synagogues or Jewish life.

“The people in Siberia never saw a Jewish person,” Lovich said, nor ever heard of Jewish people before his family arrived.

More than 60 years later, at the age of 74, Lovich, who lives in Hackettstown, at last found his place to have a bar mitzva ceremony.

On Sunday, Feb. 18, he was called to the Torah at the Chabad Jewish Center in Flanders. Rabbi Yaacov Shusterman, director of the center, gathered 13 men from the surrounding area for a minyan. At the breakfast following the ceremony, Lovich gave his bar mitzva speech in which he talked about himself, his past, and his new commitments.

After studying with Shusterman for the last two years, Lovich said, he felt the time was right to have a formal bar mitzva ceremony. During those two years, Lovich attended the rabbi’s house for Shabbat dinners, learned the Kiddush, the Sh’ma, and other prayers, and learned how put on tefillin.

“I had a good opportunity,” Lovich explained. “I feel in my soul very Jewish. I’m from a very Jewish family but I didn’t have an opportunity to study Hebrew and Torah.”

He may have had some encouragement from his 68-year-old brother, who also celebrated becoming bar mitzva three years ago in Florida.

With such distance between them, the brothers did not attend each other’s ceremonies, but that did not bother Lovich. He did not want a big affair attended by family and friends.

“I didn’t want to make it a big show,” he said. “I did it for myself.”

Born in Leningrad, Russia, in 1932, Lovich was forbidden a Jewish education by a Soviet government that closed synagogues and yeshivas throughout the country in the late 1920s. His father was a cantor until the communists closed the synagogues and he was forced to switch professions. “Nobody could keep kosher; nobody could have a bar mitzva; nobody could study Hebrew,” Lovich said. Some Jews did observe secretly at home, he said.

In 1941, the Nazis invaded and blockaded Leningrad for 900 days. While close to one million people died from cold and hunger, Lovich and his family survived.

“It’s a miracle,” he said. There was “zero” water, except from what he took from the river. The only food they were given was one-eighth of a pound of bread per day. There was no heat or electricity. These conditions lasted until his father was drafted into the army while the government transferred him, his mother, brother, grandmother, and sister to Siberia in 1942.

In 1946, Lovich returned to Leningrad, where he continued his studies, received a mechanical engineering degree, and worked as a project engineer. In 1977, sick of the “communist system and anti-Semitic country,” he immigrated to the United States, settling in Essex County.

Lovich volunteered for the then United Jewish Federation of MetroWest in Whippany from 1988 to 1995 as chair of the New Americans division. He was responsible for working with Russian immigrants, exposing them to education and cultural events.

Lovich had other priorities, however, before he could fully embrace his Judaism.

“You have to survive first,” he said. “You have to start to work. Your first priority is not religion. Your first priority is you have to survive.

“Growing up in a communist country, you came from like a different planet,” he continued. “I came with $100 in my pocket. You have to study first English. Then you have to get a job.”

To support his family, Lovich worked as an engineer for an aerospace company in Whippany.

“I was involved in many Jewish activities, but my first priority was to learn English and survive,” he said.

Of course, Jewish learning, like any mitzva, is available to Jewish adults at any age, said Shusterman.

“When you’re 13, it happens, whether one has a ceremony or not,” said Shusterman. “You’re a son of the commandments. You’re mature enough to understand and keep all of the mitzvas. You can be included in a minyan and start putting on tefillin.”

“It doesn’t make a difference what age you are,” said the rabbi. “If you don’t learn about your Judaism when you’re 13, you can always learn about the heritage, the traditions. You can always commit yourself to keep more mitzvas.”

Shusterman came to Flanders with his family two years ago to run the Chabad center in order to spread the Jewish outreach message of the Brooklyn-based Lubavitch hasidic movement to Mount Olive, Washington Township, and Warren County.

Lovich is glad he finally had his ceremony. He plans to continue his Jewish studies with Shusterman, light Shabbat candles, and recite Kiddush and the other blessings on Friday nights.

“I am very happy,” said Lovich, to have had a formal bar mitzva ceremony “because I missed the event when I was 13 years old.”