BAT MITZVAH IN MORGANTOWN, W. VA.

Dattan, Nancy

BAT MITZVAH IN MORGANTOWN, W. VA. Nancy "For a bat mitzvah?" as I pull an embroidered denim pantsuit off the rack. "I don't think I can begin to tell you how tired I'm getting of that phrase," I...

...I guess so," and she warmed gradually to enthusiasm as she drew up a small list of guests and participants...
...Well, but what would you do if it happened to usT "I would call the rabbi, I would call the principal, and I would call the police, but I wouldn't take you out of school, if that's what you're asking, because for 2,000 years there have been people who from time to time have beaten up children and called them dirty Jews...
...No...
...My baptized, agnostic husband, who traced his forebears to the Mayflower, could not have been more surprised than I was myself when I told him, "We're going to raise this child as a Jew...
...I tried negotiations: "Haven't you anything else...
...These make me look grown up...
...as for Merav, she merely wanted the ritual: "Can't I just read, and then be finished...
...Merav's bedroom, the most civilized of the options, was turned over to my uncle for the night, and Merav joined me in my double bed...
...This is a rather peculiar way to prepare for a bat mitzvah...
...Prompted by my own words, I asked my daughter with some hesitation — for she had once declared with heat that she was not Jewish, an identification which seemed to her to rest upon acts of affirmation, but a Jew, born into a people — whether she wanted to celebrate her bat mitzvah...
...and suddenly the ceremony has begun...
...We might have done better on selection if we had begun our planning before Christmas parties had emptied the stores throughout the town, although we are now able to take advantage of sale prices — a considerable advantage, it seems to me, since this dress (which is taking shape in my mind as a platonic ideal, forever sought and never attained) is manifestly destined for a single wearing...
...comes my friend's suggestion...
...I am asked by two of my friends, who set up the tables, splendid with flowers...
...The children's experiences as members of a minority group were limited...
...Let's think it through...
...time to go to synagogue...
...speaks briefly: "I never thought I would see the day when a Datan would stand to declare the praises of Moses," and he goes on to explain Datan's rebellion and the tradition of dissent in Judaism...
...Well, it would be a little unusual," although in my mind I have begun to reflect that among the unusual features of this bat mitzvah, my daughter's choice of clothing is far from a major issue...
...It would solve the problem of my dress and your present to me all at once...
...I don't think I can begin to tell you how tired I'm getting of that phrase," I tell my daughter, who has inspected every item of clothing in her size in every store in the town...
...next, my uncle, for whom an extra place had had to be made after he asked, "Don't I have an aliyahl" and when he rises for the blessing with his own tallit I remember with surprise that I was myself born only one generation away from Orthodoxy...
...Each child who comes of age is precious to us," and yes, this was what the ceremony would teach my daughter and me...
...Those aren't Jews...
...Thus my firstborn daughter, who was descended from the Mayflower on one side and Moses on the other, and who, upon arrival in Morgan-town three years later, soon learned more...
...Couldn't I wear tights with it...
...Why not...
...Her size — or so it seems to me — I shall soon discover otherwise — is not quite...
...I guess it's too small," and we are back scanning racks...
...You'll do what Shari did, just ask people to bake, and a few people will bring in honey cake and date bread and that's it...
...The synagogue has serving dishes...
...I'll hold in my stomach...
...It would cost you $15 an hour to wear that dress," but I cannot tell my daughter how greatly I should like to give it to her...
...3 With this transformation, however, a decade of pioneering came to an end: Israel is a Garden of Eden for small children, but a harsh land for the adult, and it requires two working parents to rear a family...
...Have you seen the napkins...
...some years later, on a sojourn to the United States, my former college classmate and I became part of the statistics reflecting the high divorce rate which follows intermarriage...
...As a matter of fact, you are...
...I began with the rabbi's wife, who believed me when I insisted that I hadn't the slightest idea where to begin planning, and went straight to basics: "The women will bring their baked goods in...
...I'm not this grown up...
...Do you think you can hold your breath for two hours...
...What baked goods...
...But on a gray Saturday, the sort of bleak weekend day sometimes spent in shopping centers, the question seemed to surface of its own accord: "Would you like to go shopping for a dress for your bat mitzvah...
...What cold cuts...
...In the end, however, it turned out that the child in question was an indiscriminate bully, finding words appropriate to each victim...
...Of course," he told me, "I went to everybody's bar mitzvah...
...I didn't say I didn't want to go," and off we went to a large discount house...
...Eager to prove we were citizens of the world, but also anxious to avoid offending either side of the family, we produced a ceremony which, if it had had a cast of characters, would have included everyone from the Baal Shem Tov to the Holy Ghost...
...Everybody has food...
...and the discovery of new meanings to minority group identity was to be deferred until the season for my firstborn daughter to become a Bat Mitzvah drew near...
...My Arab shirt" — fading and slightly ragged — "and my Levis...
...We move from store to store and finally the Jewish community rescues us once more and a friend produces a pair of silver shoes...
...The president of the Sisterhood had come to the door a few days earlier with a honey cake, apologizing for the fact that she would be out of town on the date of the bat mitzvah, and explaining that she had therefore baked in advance, so that I could freeze the cake and have it ready when needed...
...We were greeted by racks and racks of dresses, and it was in the dressing rooms of this store, whose supplies seemed boundless, that I found my daughter to be not quite a child, as she looked at herself in a long dress which reached to the shins and did not quite zip up the back...
...As we explored our academic kinship, it emerged that we had been neighbors as well, in a densely Jewish area where I spent my childhood...
...Datan, that's what people do here," he told me, and it seemed I had still a good deal to learn about the coming of age in a tiny Jewish community in a small city in West Virginia...
...SHEVAT 5736 MOMENT 51 "She's the one who just wants to read from the Torah in her jeans and make a quick getaway...
...I consider for a moment making the purchase, for the sake of the light in her eyes...
...She has dealt not only with years of customers but with three sons now grown to adulthood — "and if you don't feel comfortable with them, just bring them back...
...To this celebration I have brought three bottles of sacramental wine, five cans of Hawaiian Punch, paper cups and napkins, a cake, and a daughter, who, though eligible for the Daughters of the American Revolution, was reared in Israel and read Exodus in the original Hebrew before she read Dick and Jane in English...
...she will learn that for herself when her own daughter comes to maturity and she must choose among gifts...
...5 My uncle flew in on Friday afternoon to join us for the ceremony...
...And there, in one of the town's most expensive stores, my daughter is zipped into a long red dress with a bodice of white lace and price tag of $30 and she stands before the mirror, in love...
...I know how you feel when it's hard to decide, and you certainly want to feel comfortable at your own bat mitzvah...
...Although she has fortunately outgrown my shoes, she is not quite my height, and I wear the smallest size manufactured for adult women...
...The ceremony includes the food...
...Upon my return to Israel with the children, I shed my married name, an Anglo-Saxon name, and took Datan, the name of a heretic 50 MOMENT JANUARY 1976 who rebelled against the establishment of the priesthood of Moses and Aaron at the time of the exodus from Egypt...
...but sometime later in the day Merav asked suddenly: "Aren't we going shopping for my bat mitzvah dress...
...I don't see why not...
...We move to the women's section, and I discover that my daughter is, like me, a petite size 5. "But I want a long dress," for the lust has not gone out of her eyes, and in this store there are none at all to fit her, and we return to the downtown shopping area...
...The easy answers, the prohibition in Leviticus against a woman's putting on the clothing of a man (which might activate the heretic in my daughter's soul) or the injunction that no one does that (which had never held much force for me until my feet took their first steps on the path of small town Jewish tradition) did not seem promising...
...I think it may be just as important to know what that feels like as it is to know that the Jews have a land of their own," I heard my own voice declare, with some surprise...
...I still do, when I get the chance...
...You'll have baked goods, and then you would probably want to avoid the chopped liver, that gets complicated, but you'd have to have cold cuts and some sort of salad . . .." "What salad...
...I learned the words myself, for I was a diligent child...
...Food was the first hurdle...
...Abruptly, on the Wednesday before the Saturday on which she is to celebrate her coming of age, Merav asks: "Could we just call it off...
...I don't want a party...
...prelims and he is transformed in tallit and kippah and the ancient invocation with which my daughter's reading begins...
...no, I have not...
...Some years would pass before I learned that Scriptural fragment in Hebrew, found that those were the words tucked into m'zzuzot, posted one upon the doorpost of my own house, realized that Freud's concern was not with God but with men, and discovered that his skepticism and mine bore a surprising resemblance to a tradition of angry questioners of God found, of all places, among the Chassidim...
...Certainly not...
...And my daughter's voice, "And a new Pharaoh arose in Egypt who knew not Joseph . . . ." The Dean of Social Work, co-editor with me of proceedings from a conference we had organized, and echoes of arguments vanish in the magic of the recited blessing...
...Presently a compromise is achieved: I discover a reasonably priced long-sleeved ruffled dress which reaches my daughter's ankles, and in which she stands, splendid, at the threshold of womanhood, perfect in all respects except that the ruffles do not hide her hiking boots...
...The Jews are a tribe, however, and tribal decisions are not made alone...
...The ceremonies that mark the coming of age must nevertheless involve a fixed quantity of nervous tension, and we were soon to discover where ours lay: in the areas others take for granted, food and clothing...
...What chopped liver...
...The Torah reading, for which American children endure years of Hebrew lessons, was a portion which she had first read in second grade in Israel...
...As the event draws near, however, being comfortable looks like it's out of the question...
...The ecumenical spirit was shortlived, however...
...They told me there's a kid in school who beats up other kids and calls them dirty Jews...
...I learned it from non-Jews...
...Whatever you like...
...It doesn't fit...
...Why don't you just take the shoes home and try them on with the dress and see how you feel about them...
...I needed an American income, a developmental psychology program, a small town where women and children were safe...
...I was pregnant with a Jew...
...On the contrary, I had made no plans at all and my daughter's plans had been quite different: "What should I wear for my bat mitzvah...
...Downstairs at the reception I discover that the women of the Sisterhood have prepared everything — "Isn't it luck that we turned out to have matching tablecloths...
...How can I possibly ask people to bake...
...By chance, he never touched my children...
...We wakened into Saturday morning and I dressed my daughter as though she were made of porcelain: Her brother and sister and my uncle were marshaled 'round her...
...Though his father, a Protestant minister, performed our marriage ceremony, we wrote it .ourselves...
...But she is not quite a child's Nancy Datan...
...On our previous sojourn, in Chicago, they had attended a Jewish day school, and had wakened on the morning of the Yom Kippur holiday to disbelief: "It can't be Yom Kippur...
...I don't know," and pursuing my policy of nonintervention I went no further...
...Datan, it doesn't have to be elaborate, but there has to be food...
...we have quarreled over the value of Ph.D...
...We'll have to get you some shoes," and my mother once wished for me a daughter like myself in all ways, including a readiness to try on and reject every pair of shoes in a store, and her wish found fulfill52 MOMENT JANUARY 1976 ment...
...Although our personal nondenominational agnosticism remained untouched, we soon renounced citizenship of the world, became instead residents of Israel...
...but no, I would spend the money in a minute for books, but the lesson to be learned from the purchase of that dress on my salary is not one I wish to teach...
...Would my black and white body suit and my black jeans be all right...
...Jerusalem broods over the centuries and commands the heart: Morgantown is only a small citadel of decency in an undistinguished region...
...Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children...
...And so I came to Morgantown with three children and a dog, four suitcases and a briefcase, to begin again...
...and so it must have been for all our generations, as parents and children brought one another to their coming of age...
...It won't zip shut...
...Can't you elope at a bat mitzvah...
...SHEVAT 5736 MOMENT 53...
...but there is more than luck behind it...
...If I had dared, I might have made the same declaration myself...
...You are grown up...
...for I had been astonished at the community response...
...As it is said, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might...
...And I agreed, for that aspect of the ceremony was, finally, to involve a total of one hour's investment in two casual rehearsal readings, as I sat in the bathtub and Merav on the bathroom floor...
...It does happen sometimes...
...a colleague whose training is in physiological psychology, and he adds his voice to the others' voices, and my daughter reads on, "And Moses went unto Pharaoh . . ." and finally my colleagues' sons, so that as the reading is concluded Merav stands among her own friends, come of age, and the blessing for parents is said, "Blessed art Thou who has given us life, sustained us, and brought us to see this day...
...Never mind, just go ahead...
...That could be...
...Do you want your daughter to feel left out...
...Her jeans 'round her ankles, hiking boots on her feet, and a dress not quite the right size not quite covering the rest of her, she gazed into the mirror and said, "I think I like this dress...
...All we want is the ceremony...
...Since retreat to Orthodoxy was not in my repertoire, I intended to try to eliminate the question of a Jewish identity, to move to Israel...
...The force of this declaration derived in part from my memories of childhood festivals, and certainly owed some of its strength to the fundamentalist tracts an aunt of his sent us from time to time...
...for I remembered the catered affairs of Chicago and Jerusalem...
...Consistent with the ongoing I-and-Thou of self-definition by silhouette against the Christian majority which had been true of my life to this point, I was first brought to consider a celebration of my daughter's bat mitzvah by a Lutheran, a provost at the university who, like myself, had come to his intellectual maturity at the University of Chicago...
...although I had packed for Israel without a second thought, I had never discovered the joys of feeding one's family...
...I didn't know there were that many people who weren't Jews...
...Next a Levi recites a blessing, and it is a boy just recently come to bar mitzvah age himself...
...Why not...
...However, neither feature of SHEVAT 5736 MOMENT 49 She stands, splendid, at the threshold of womanhood, perfect in all respects except that the ruffles do not hide her hiking boots...
...No, baking for a large gathering held no attractions for me...
...A Kohen is called to bless the Torah, and it is my colleague...
...I later learned that my son had declared that morning to his teacher, "Don't expect me to work today, because my UNCLE is coming HERE and I'm too EXCITED to do ANYTHING...
...and I found West Virginia University...
...whose personal memoir about the Yom Kippur War appeared in our October issue, teaches psychology at West Virginia University Datan size either, not even the size of a large child, as we have learned by trying to zip up dresses from the pre-teen rack, getting no further than the middle of her rib cage before giving up...
...Neither did I, until the world taught me otherwise — though I am about to learn that this is only part of today's teaching...
...But the principal contribution to this celebration was made by this community, in which each coming of age is precious...
...Indeed, after one day of a succession of meetings which blurred into the evening, at nightfall I was tucking the children into bed, and as I kissed my six-year-old son good night he asked, "Aren't we having any dinner tonight...
...But when I spoke of my surprise to a friend, she told me simply: "We are a small and fragile community...
...I didn't know you wanted to go...
...4 "What's wrong with my black and white body suit and my black jeans...
...another timed her vacation to end with enough time to bake...
...I look and find not the flowered napkins I had brought in, but ceremonial napkins made to be imprinted with the name of the bar mitzvah child, and on the first flap a slot tidily cut with pinking shears, so that the second flap shows through, and typed on it, MERAV DATAN - "They were left over from Larry's bar mitzvah and T thought it might be nice," says a friend, dismissing my surprise and gratitude...
...Where is it written that a bat mitzvah includes food...
...All the cars are moving...
...I dropped the matter...
...While certain components of Jewish motherhood were clearly strong within me, others seemed to be absent...
...2 I married a classmate out of those angry adolescent days, with whom I shared the unique joys of a liberal arts education at a small college...
...but I learned no Hebrew, never celebrated my own bat mitzvah, and met the writings of Freud at the crest of my own adolescent skepticism, bringing Civilization and Its Discontents home in triumph to my mother as proof of the absence of God...
...and it was not long before the instinct for survival led my daughters to cook for the family...
...The credit and the blame for the renunciation is mine...
...When I mentioned my plans to a colleague, I was told: "Datan, that's out of the question, nobody has a bat mitzvah without food...
...I'll sleep with my daughter on the night before her bat mitzvah too," she told me, and phantoms of priestesses danced briefly through my head as she turned over into slumber...
...Though the years which bring a daughter to bat mitzvah lie between that moment and this, I can recall the shock that came to me as a new life moved in my body and I found that I was not at all pregnant with a citizen of the world...
...They're not Jews...
...I hope you'll come to my daughter's bat mitzvah too," although up to that very minute I had not given it any thought: My daughter's march toward maturity was proceeding more quickly than I realized...
...One of my friends remarked, "To be perfectly fair, she ought to be required to recite in Latin and go through all the agonies our kids have to suffer...
...perhaps not quite a woman, but a new lust had begun to grow in her eyes...
...And the reading continues, with the five Israelites — Jews who are neither Kohen nor Levi — rising to recite their blessings in turn: first, our neighbor...
...our present situation is the outcome of planning...
...In the course of time this daughter was joined by another and by a son...
...We can wait until you get out of the bathtub and I'll read in the bedroom...
...You'll bring a couple of bottles of wine, paper napkins, and paper cups, and I'll be there to help you set it up, and so will everyone else" — and indeed they were, though that was yet to come, for the next hurdle was still to be crossed...
...it is I who bear responsibility for the phrase...
...The rabbi, who loves the celebration of Bar Mitzvah...
...And these words which I command thee this day shall be upon thy heart...

Vol. 1 • January 1976 • No. 6


 
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