Invitation To A Bar Mitzvah
KUR, CAROL
INVITATION TO A BAR MITZVAH The rites and wrongs of passage. CAROL KUR Some years ago, I saw a bar mitz-vah invitation that I shall never forget. It was a booklet of black velour on the outside,...
...Then, one night at Friday evening services, I watched her flip the pages of the prayerbook to the Shabbat morning service...
...And with good reason...
...But even the Reform movement has bent to the pressure of tradition, and today, it is rare that a 13-year-old Jewish boy foregoes some sort of ceremony of bar mitzvah...
...a father was responsible for the deeds of his son until the age of 13...
...After all, we had almost five years For six indulgent years, she had lived blissfully on a diet of chocolate mousse...
...The trip exceeded all our expectations...
...But Dana feels that becoming a bat mitzvah changed her life, and we think she's probably right...
...The steady rhythm continues...
...She said she'd think about it...
...And more...
...I suppose we'll let her...
...What if the Schechter kids hate the service...
...Frying pan to fire...
...She asked her guitar-playing sisters if they would participate in the morning service by providing the music, and then went through the service with them page by page to determine what they would sing, and which version...
...Our family has now been this route three times...
...Frazzled, exhausted, we stopped and tried to explain to our three neglected children just what it was we were doing and why...
...I wish I could find something funny to say about Susan's bat mitzvah preparations...
...She became a bat mitzvah after another trauma, this one personal...
...I should have known that no event, certainly no Jewish event, is without trauma...
...It's not easy to develop a reasonable one about a bar mitzvah when, one cold December night, your ten-year-old (or nine or eight-year-old) says, "Where are going tonight...
...Whether or not she was willing—or able—to muster the necessary effort was a question only she could answer...
...We sat at the kitchen table one Sunday and talked about her portion and its message, hoping to generate some ideas...
...Why make such a big hullabaloo over it...
...I should have known that no event, certainly no Jewish event, is without trauma...
...Dana was a different case entirely...
...I viewed it as an expense we didn't need, an excuse for a party, and an opportunity for our precocious first-born to demonstrate to family and friends that which they already knew: that she was bright, charming and capable...
...Everyone goes through the experience and, for each one in turn, the support, the encouragement, the reaching out is there, from the headmaster, from the teachers, from classmates...
...They are joined, in ever increasing numbers, by concerned and committed families who are celebrating in serious and often creative ways...
...After rescheduling her date, she proceeded to track the rabbi like a persistent hound dog until he agreed to meet with her—a year and a half in advance of the event...
...The rabbi had asked her if she'd like to give a d'var Torah...
...So, once again, but for different reasons, the event became a family affair...
...And at seven a.m., we began all over again...
...But that's it...
...I'm scared," she said, "but I think it's going to be okay...
...Admittedly, with two super-achievers for older sisters, she had a tough act to follow...
...Then, one afternoon about two weeks before the service, she presented us with a messy but coherent explication of the line...
...Let's do it on a Friday evening, as part of the regular service...
...Her grades in school have improved dramatically, and she is no longer satisfied to simply "get by...
...Obviously, there were a million things I was supposed to be doing...
...Simple, low key, low budget...
...The "status of obligation for boys of 13 was assumed in early times," reports the Encyclopedia Judaica, but no ceremony marked the occasion...
...It's very important to me, even if you don't care about it...
...But do you think the rabbi will let me do it my way...
...Can I do some of it myself with my guitar...
...The article goes on to explain that it was at age 13 that Abraham rejected the idols, that Jacob and Esau went their separate ways...
...If she wanted her bat mitzvah to be serious, we'd see that it was serious...
...I want a single," she said...
...But the point is that until fairly recently, this was a process that "just happened," in much the same way that an 18 year-old comes to the age of legal majority today...
...In her mind, her bat mitzvah ceremony took on added significance...
...And Alison, true to form, disappointed no one on the day she became a bat mitzvah—not even herself, her most severe critic...
...But I hadn't counted on anything quite so devastating...
...MOTH-er...
...Take my advice...
...Her goals were simple: to delight her parents and siblings, and to have fun...
...Confirmation would be held on Sunday evening, so, if we wanted, we could schedule Alison's bat mitzvah for Monday morning as part of the festival service...
...As far as we were concerned, we made it clear that if she felt it was too much for her, we'd scrub the whole thing, but if she decided to go ahead, we'd help in every way we could...
...We went to work in the morning, came home to throw some sort of fast-food supper at the kids, and left for the Federation office, returning home at two or three a.m...
...What if I lose the place...
...And you have to answer, "We're going to a meeting at the temple to get your bar mitzvah date, dear...
...Yes, you can tell your mother...
...Youngsters get the name, address and brief family history of a 12- or 13-year-old Russian child, with whom they correspond...
...Consequently, two nights before the bat mitzvah, I stayed up all night...
...And the beginning of the answer is the same as other Jewish answers of the day: we have to get involved...
...We worked at improving the content and quality of Jewish education...
...all of a sudden, ethnic was in, and we loved it...
...While she was certainly preparing for her day in an uncharacteristically systematic fashion, she continued to be consumed with terror...
...I cannot...
...She signed up for some lessons in Torah cantillation at school and began learning the maftir...
...According to Eleazer b. Simeon (second century C.E...
...she was terrified...
...I don't want to share it...
...It was important to her that the service be consistent with her Schechter background...
...We have a lot of out of town guests, and they'll be hungry...
...We wrote new prayerbooks...
...For each of Dana's 13 classmates, the ceremony of bar/bat mitzvah has meant something special in their young Jewish lives...
...to plan for the next one...
...I was apologetic...
...And the will to "do well" is, I believe, as much a desire not to let the others down as it is anything else...
...His delight turned to perplexity as she ticked off her list of "can I's...
...it was delicious, and we were in absolutely no hurry to have her grow up...
...It's not a wedding...
...There was a special congregational meeting called...
...We devised creative new ways to mark days of joy and days of remembrance...
...And in its aftermath, we breathed a huge sigh of both contentment and relief...
...After all, most of it was as familiar to her as breathing...
...Later, at the Oneg Shabbat, she approached the rabbi, and the rest of us cooled our heels for the next hour while they were closeted in his study...
...Becoming involved gets messy sometimes...
...But thanks to several warm and supportive teachers (and to her repentant family) she managed to kvetch her way through the first six grades...
...We did discuss, and then rejected, the possibility of having the bat mitzvah in Israel...
...In October 1973, the Yom Kippur War broke out...
...There are links that can be forged with gift money, both by encouraging the offering of a portion as tz'dakah (if you need help, see Danny Siegel's articles in moment) and by using the balance to fund a trip to Israel...
...Academically, she was indifferent to the things that bored her or that required more than minimal effort...
...Only now, in retrospect, do we realize what a risk we took...
...Can I do the whole morning service myself...
...She was the dessert...
...What if nobody wants to come...
...This child hadn't yet come to room temperature...
...There are still too many marginal Jews for whom the day of bar or bat mitzvah marks the end of formal affiliation with the Jewish community, still too many families that wait until their eldest children are required to begin religious training before joining a synagogue (and resign the day after the bar mitzvah of the youngest, cutting them off at the passage...
...It was an event filled with joy and meaning, even as we gratefully acknowledged that we would have been perfectly happy with a little less meaning, thank you...
...It is a celebration in a vacuum, and, for many, has represented just the opposite of what it was supposed to symbolize...
...It's my day...
...We Jews, it seems, are always out of sync...
...And the longer we watched her operate, the more we found ourselves egging her on...
...There is no question that the experience gave her a sense of self that might otherwise have taken her years to discover...
...Or—worse—we still hear about parents who begin "shopping for a bar mitzvah" six or eight months before their child's thirteenth birthday...
...She emerged with several books and a shaky grin...
...But for more of us, of late, our newly heightened Jewish consciousness has forced us to address a number of serious questions: If, according to tradition, a 13-year-old becomes entitled to certain religious privileges and takes on certain obligations, what purpose is—or might be—served by the formal ceremony...
...But Alison wanted to share her day with a community of people she loved, and for our family, it was the right decision...
...She did just that...
...And then her bat mitzvah date was almost upon us...
...After a good deal of soul searching (laced, of course, with a proper measure of guilt), we determined, first, that we had better provide Dana with an experience that was unique to her, and second, that the time had come for our family in general, and our youngest in particular, to be part of a more intense Jewish educational encounter than the temple could provide...
...Problem: do you create six ideal tables and four awful ones, or ten acceptable compromises...
...Can I do the whole Torah portion instead of just a maftir...
...We don't feel older, but our children keep reaching milestone events, reminding us—as if we needed to be reminded—how quickly it all goes...
...As for bat mitzvah celebrations, the feeling of embrace and the sense of continuity will remain with us...
...In every area of social development, she excelled...
...They are manifest in things as simple as the extension of a report deadline or the waiving of a quiz, in things as complex as the innate understanding that the 13-year-olds exhibit when a classmate, two weeks prior to his bar mitzvah ceremony, becomes a little manic...
...And so we began to plan a family trip to Israel as part of the first UJA National Young Leadership Family Mission...
...I knew I was getting into trouble...
...And even as we did our best to reassure her that there would always be someone to help, and that the people who would be there cared about her, we feared that she might, in the end, panic...
...Not a day went by without a recitation of "what if's...
...Clearly, the bar mitzvah ceremony marks a rite of passage that had become largely symbolic...
...It was a booklet of black velour on the outside, shiny red on the inside, bound with a bright red tassel and printed in gold...
...Mostly, I think, we want this symbolic coming of age to signify something special, particular and Jewish, as other rites of passage do...
...She had written about the need for Jewish strength and physical power...
...Actually, a formal ceremony of bar mitzvah is relatively new in Jewish tradition, dating back to the 15th century (there is no mention of bat mitzvah before the 19th century...
...What if I open my mouth and nothing comes out...
...Well, how much of it can I do...
...What can we do to underscore its message—a change in status, a step away from childhood into a new level of Jewish awareness and self-awareness...
...And now that Dana has learned'that growing up has its rewards, she'll undoubtedly want to explore it further by doing something outrageous like going to high school...
...It's a symbolic ceremony...
...But I'm getting ahead of myself...
...For the very first time, she understood that real effort pays off, that it is worth working hard to produce an outstanding result...
...It's a beautiful, rich idea...
...And when that was finished, she started work on the haftorah...
...Can I chant my haftorah instead of just reading it...
...Can I choose the music...
...We searched for paths of access to being—and doing—Jewish...
...And when I told her about it, she had a fit...
...My Jewish communal activities had been extensive enough so that I had often heard some version of, "I'm sorry, I just can't do anything for you this year...
...It announced a production in three acts, or maybe it was four, starring the bar mitzvah boy himself, directed by his mother, produced by his father, the prologue to which was the synagogue service, the grand finale, of course, the formal party—black tie...
...She mulled...
...Tcare about you...
...From then on a person can perform acts having legal implications, such as being a member of a bet din, being reckoned as part of a minyan, and buying and selling property...
...She had participated in a morning service every day for six plus years...
...He was delighted...
...Just six months prior to the date, she became seriously ill and spent several weeks in the hospital...
...For the next three weeks, time was suspended...
...They rejoice for and with one another...
...Those are the Shabbat mornings when everyone is much relieved to leave the sanctuary and focus on the hors d'ouvres, which are often more interesting than the guests, many of whom are business associates who have never met the boy of the hour but who were "owed" invitations...
...And bat mitzvah is increasing in popularity among all denominations...
...If you want to change it, call the rabbi and ask him if we have any options...
...And so we enrolled her at our Solomon Schechter Day School...
...The rabbi was adamantly opposed to the idea, and, finally, it was defeated...
...We waited...
...And where, for heaven's sake, do you put Aunt Minnie...
...And in the end, the only real hassle, completely my fault, was that I made the mistake of asking advice and counsel on seating arrangements...
...Is it wishful thinking on my part, or rapidly advancing age, or lack of business associates, to suggest that such exercises in excess are diminishing, if not in intensity, at least in profusion...
...Chances are, we've all been party (no pun) to one of those painful "prologue" services, in which the "star" puts on an abbreviated poor-to-minimally-acceptable "performance," the father stumbles embarrassingly through his aliyah, the mother steals nervous glances in the direction of the caterer, and the rabbi has been prepped to "keep it short...
...How can we make that ceremony meaningful for ourselves, and, most important, for our 13-year-olds, who have enough to worry about with the pressures and confusions of adolescence without having to put on a show for their grandparents...
...Still, it was touch and go...
...I fully and freely confess that I was brought kicking and screaming to my own heightened consciousness and involvement in the bat mitzvah of our eldest daughter...
...Not that those who preceded us, who set the tradition, were completely to blame...
...Not by might and not by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord," from her Shabbat Chanukah haftorah portion...
...It is both a joy and a wonder to watch that class at the bar or bat mitzvah ceremony of one of its own...
...A year is not a very long time...
...We had known some families who did that, for whom it was a very special experience...
...She was pleased— smug, even...
...We've heard about the jungle safaris, the weekend cruises, the New York hotel ballroom-become-gambling casino (where the piece de resistance was a joint supplied to every guest after dinner), even the Orange Bowl...
...Her class was enormous, and so hers was to be a b'not mitzvah ceremony, shared with one of her classmates...
...What if I forget the melody...
...It was neither the first time, nor the last, that this grandmotherly-type eldest child and I engaged in a round of role reversal...
...We began to look for new ways to celebrate...
...How can we make the celebration truly Jewish, and not just a party and presents...
...Fortunately, her rabbi and her teachers responded positively...
...Now, she was expected to make the switch to liver and spinach—and like it...
...I'm naive...
...I cried all day long, and when the rabbi pronounced the priestly benediction, there wasn't a dry eye in the congregation...
...I suppose it was inevitable that I finally got nervous...
...The sensitivity and caring, the outpouring of concern, envelops, nurtures, protects...
...Susan, of course, had other ideas...
...Granted, we may be a little slow...
...We were apprehensive...
...By the morning of her bat mitzvah day, she was happy and excited but only mildly terrified, and, just as we told her, as soon as she'd uttered the first word from the bima, she relaxed and had a perfectly marvelous time...
...And one of those paths—increasingly travelled, I think—led to changes in the ways we celebrate bar and bat mitzvah, heretofore perhaps the most misunderstood and abused tradition in contemporary Jewish life...
...It is against the backdrop of late 20th century society that the rite of passage into Jewish adulthood seems so peculiarly misplaced...
...Not only would it symbolize an important milestone in her Jewish life, but it would also be a public affirmation to all of us that she was finally and completely well again...
...It couldn't have gone more beautifully...
...The indefinite became painfully definite when she entered school...
...It began about a decade ago...
...In due course, Alison was assigned a date for a Saturday morning in the spring of 1974...
...We built sukkot...
...I know most of this," she whispered to me...
...And it's two years away...
...The Reform movement probably had the right idea when it instituted the ceremony of Confirmation, within the context of religious school, originally, as a substitute for bar mitzvah...
...Later, when we had a chance to talk privately, we decided that it was terribly important that we show the girls, instead of trying to tell them, why this business of being Jewish occupied so much of our lives...
...What we believed, at first, to be a routine case of appendicitis was instead a more difficult gastro-intestinal problem...
...On the day she became a bat mitzvah, she was radiant...
...Because the two events were so closely linked in time and because we spent so much time talking about them in virtually the same breath, the next several months became an exciting and anticipatory Jewish experience for all of us...
...As a Schechter student, she is part of a special Jewish community that celebrates the bar and bat mitzvah of each of its members as profoundly and as joyfully as the immediate family does...
...Nothing happened...
...A group of parents was lobbying for the option of Friday evening bar/bat mitzvah ceremonies, and we were part of that group...
...Or, if you just can't bring yourself to lie, tell your youngster the truth, and the date, and then set another date, perhaps a year before the date, to begin talking about it seriously...
...We were determined to ease the way for her, to help her in her preparations as much as we could, to be sure that the pressure on her was minimal...
...Everybody, but everybody, can tell a can-you-top-this bar mitzvah story...
...I care about it...
...To his great credit, our rabbi, who remained our friend even after we had been on the wrong side of the Friday night controversy, was encouraging and helpful, although Alison asked for some things that were departures from the standard bar/bat mitzvah format of our Reform temple...
...the melody is enriched with lovely harmonies...
...We discussed the possibility of postponing the bat mitzvah date...
...I had been, frankly, lukewarm about it...
...It's a bat mitzvah...
...Once she made the decision, she discovered that she had some very definite ideas about what she wanted—and didn't want...
...But I didn't know what they were...
...I don't want to talk about it," I said...
...It is at once strange and satisfying to have come to the end of a cycle...
...Now, she was expected to make the switch to liver and spinach and like it...
...As it turned out, Memorial Day Monday happened to coincide with Shavuot that year...
...I know...
...There were complications, several surgical procedures and a long period of recuperation...
...Learn more from your rabbi or local Council for Soviet Jewry...
...When the American youngster becomes a bat mitzvah, so does his counterpart, by proxy...
...I read it with the same delight and pleasure I had the first time I watched one of those fast film versions of a bud opening into full flower...
...She forced us to deal with the occasion of becoming a bat mitzvah in her usual no-nonsense manner...
...Of course, we were subliminally aware that at some point, we, and she, would have to change our ways, but we figured that it wasn't necessary to do today that which we could postpone until indefinitely...
...Have you heard about "twinning" a bar or bat mitzvah with a child in the Soviet Union...
...Her position as "the baby of the family" was established from the day she was born...
...A couple of years before we settled on that first bat mitzvah date, there had been a huge controversy at our temple...
...One evening, after about ten days of this, our middle daughter, then IOV2, blurted out, "I think you care more about the children in Israel than you do about us...
...Susan, who is a stoic, wouldn't hear of it...
...I'm having a bar mitzvah...
...Ask him," I said...
...She conducted the service and executed her maftir and haftorah portions with poise and dignity and an inner strength that was almost palpable...
...It's an investment that may net a lifetime of return...
...The good news is that they are not alone...
...Just when the world is rapidly falling apart, we find ourselves in the midst of a Jewish renaissance...
...She went through a similar exercise with the rabbi...
...You don't need, God forbid, a war to link two important Jewish family events...
...That means breaking the vacuum seal and putting the bar mitzvah where it belongs—into the context and rhythm of our Jewish lives...
...Of course she would conduct the morning service...
...She worked hard, harder than she had ever worked in her life...
...I had the uneasy feeling that I would arrive at the temple on the morning of the service to find that I'd forgotten something vital...
...For six indulgent years, she had lived blissfully on a diet of chocolate mousse...
...There were agonizing hours of listening to her go over a passage again and again— wrong—and finally slamming the book closed in frustration...
...And that was about how it went...
...Thanks to the United Nations and Munich, to 1967 and 1973, we declared ourselves Zionists...
...There is, for example, the issue of perspective...
Vol. 1 • December 1981 • No. 7
