ceet eL ra to
B'nai Mitzvah Come Of Age
That moment
awareness of accepting
hat do you remember
the responsibility of
most about your bar
being a Jew.
or bat mitzvah?
For some, that means
Was it the service itself, or the
taking on the mitzvot in a
party that followed? Is the memo-
serious way — not just
ry focused on your performance
being called to the Torah
anxiety or the notion of your
and counted in the min-
becoming an adult, at least in the
yan — and for others it
eyes of Jewish law, at a time when
means taking on a moral
you were just entering adoles-
conscience through acts
Gary Rosenblatt
cence?
of charity and kindness,
Special to the
How is it that perhaps our
perhaps a fundraising
Jewish News
most public performance comes
drive for a worthy cause
at such a tender, awkward and
or visiting residents of a
self-conscious age?
My thoughts turned to the b'nai mitzvah senior citizens home.
While one may argue that the deeper
experience, including my own all those
meaning of becoming a Jewish adult may
years ago, after having read a compelling
be lost on youngsters at the age of 12 (for
book on the subject and learning about
girls) or 13 (for boys), Mark Oppenheimer,
another just published. Indeed, with the
national media reporting on the phenome- in Thirteen and a Day (Farrar, Straus &
Giroux), a thoughtful account of the wide
non of non-Jewish youngsters demanding
variety of ways the ritual is marked in
a b'nai mitzvah-like party for themselves
America today, suggests that "13 remains a
after attending their Jewish friend&
sensible age for children to begin the
beginnings of their adulthood."
"Character is a muscle he writes. "It
needs to be flexed in childhood but the
real training comes at the age when you're
more to blame for your choices than your
parents are. In that light, the bar and bat
mitzvah come at the right time. The
medievals knew what they were doing."
\,``.°
Oppenheimer, a 31-year-old journalist
z
with a doctorate in religious history from
Yale (who never had a bar mitzvah him-
self), takes a compassionate but serious
\1/4, 71
look at a ritual too often defined only by
its excesses. He traveled the nation for two
years and reports on how bar and bat
mitzvahs are celebrated, from some of the
Vkl.1\A!
lekN§NN
elaborate party-focused affairs in the met-
NANNYV‘Ns.,:t:V1:‘Vc\N:
C
ropolitan areas, to small-town events in
the South, to adult converts who choose to
mark the occasion, to a Lubavitch bar
mitzvah in Anchorage, Alaska.
Along the way, he says, he was humbled
extravaganzas, one gets the sense that a
by
the experience. "I started off arrogant,
rite of passage for youngsters may be
Mallory Tyner of West Bloomfield
thinking
I knew what I would find',' he told
Judaism's next contribution to American
reads from the Torah for her bat
me,
but
soon
changed his mind. He said
culture.
mitzvah in October at Adat
his
biggest
surprise
was realizing how
It's understandable. Though the ritual is
Shalom Synagogue, Farmington
much
he
came
to
like
all the people he met.
nowhere to be found in the Torah and was
Hills.
"Most
were
thoughtful
and earnest:' he
a little-celebrated event until the mid-20th
said,
adding
that
he
came
to appreciate
century, it has become increasingly accept-
that
"Judaism
is
tremendously
appealing
ed by all Jewish denominations as a com-
in
a
lot
of
ways."
What
most
b'nai
mitzvah
munal connection between a young per-
have
in
common,
he
found,
is
the
lesson
son - girls now as well as boys - and the
that "they have reached a milestone they
Jewish people; less a spiritual experience
should be proud of for having reached?'
for most than a moment to celebrate one's
of taking
responsibility.
,
--
/ 4
,
2
58
CELEBRATE • 2006
JN
W
Exploring the intersection of Jewish and
American culture in a lighter way is Bar
Mitzvah Disco, a collection of 3,000 bar
and bat mitzvah photos from the 1970s
and '80s, due out last November. Roger
Bennett says he and co-authors Nick Kroll
and Jules Shell sought to tell the story of
their generation — "who we are and how
we got to be that way" — through the prism
of "the happiest year" of their lives, when
going to a bar or bat mitzvah was a weekly
experience.
The book, which includes some 20
essays by the likes of novelist Jonathan
Safran Foer and comedian Sarah
Silverman, has the ideal folks to write the
foreword: the Village People, whose pop
song "YMCA" surely got heavier play at
these affairs than "Hava Negilah."
"Our book is, and isn't, about bar and
bat mitzvahs:' Bennett said. "It's as much
about the adolescent experience as it is
about the ritual itself?'
Bennett, whose day job is vice president
of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman
Philanthropies, said the '70s and '80s
marked a time when non-Jews more com-
monly participated in b'nai mitzvah
events, which became "a universally
respected and adored ritual." The unique
challenge for his generation, said Bennett,
who is in his mid-30s, is deciding how
Jewish to be in an age when "we can be
whoever we want to be."
Clearly, the bar and bat mitzvah ritual
takes on different meaning for each suc-
cessive generation, but its ultimate power
may come from its public nature, especial-
ly at a time and in a society when, as
Bennett notes, our identities are self-
defined and no longer imposed.
By coming forward in the synagogue
before family and community to accept
responsibility for the mitzvot, young peo-
ple start to realize they are part of a long
and proud tradition, one we hope they will
embrace and cherish throughout their
lives. It's our job, then, to convince them
that their serious inquiry into what it
means to be a Jew should begin, and not
end, on that special day. El
Gary Rosenblatt is the editor and publisher of
the Jewish Week of New York. This column
originally appeared in the Jewish Week in
September. He can be reached at
Gary@jewishweek.org .