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Bar/Bat
Mitzvah First of all let me wish you l'shana tova. May this be a good, prosperous and fulfilling year for all of you. The High Holidays offer me an opportunity to discuss with you fundamental issues facing this congregation and the Jewish people. This morning I wish to speak on one of those issues. Maybe I missed something. But I don't recall in the Torah reading this morning a word about Isaac's bar mitzvah. Other life cycle events are mentioned - his birth, his circumcision and weaning, but nothing about his bar mitzvah. The Torah reading tomorrow, which is a continuation of where we left off today, portrays Isaac as an already mature person. So had this rite of passage occurred - it should have been mentioned in today's Scriptural assignment. Of course, I am speaking tongue in cheek. The concept of bar mitzvah first appears in the Talmud - many, many centuries after the Bible was sealed and canonized. It is in the Talmud that the rabbis establish age 13 as the time a child achieves legal responsibility for his actions. Still, not until many centuries later - in the late Middle Ages - is an actual ceremony celebrating this new status prescribed. And do you know when the first known bat mitzvah for a girl was held? It was in this century - in 1922. Nonetheless, even though bar and bat mitzvah have no roots in our Bible, they are the most popular ceremonies in Judaism and the ones that excite the most interest, involvement and preparation. Lately, there have been a spate of negative articles in newspapers and magazines about bar/bat mitzvah. One of them in New York Magazine titled "Bash Mitzvah" highlighted, in an unflattering way, the ostentatious parties that accompany many bar/bat mitzvah celebrations. Certainly turning a premiere religious event into a material extravaganza is a missed opportunity to teach our child lasting spiritual values. And frankly it reflects poorly on the American Jewish community. We do urgently need to rethink how we are celebrating this preeminent religious milestone in our child's life. But I must state that despite
all the jokes about bar/bat mitzvah being more bar than mitzvah,
they are a very important and moving religious occasion for most
children and their parents. For parents, bar/bat mitzvah is an appreciation
of the joys of parenthood and the celebration of their son or daughter
who has grown into a lovely and loving young man or woman. As they
watch their child stand confidently and firmly on his or her own
two feet, they glimpse the future when this same child will take
even larger steps toward independence. I look at the parents and
I see that they are alive to the miracle of their child turning
a momentous corner in his or her life. Their expression defines
nachas, the Yiddish word that means both joy and pride. Bar and bat mitzvah impacts not only on the parents and child but also on the extended family. It is a time for drawing boundaries, for defining who is misphacha, who is family? If in Israel a debate frequently swirls around "who is a Jew?" regarding bar/bat mitzvah, it is "who gets the invitation?" Who is in our circle and who is out? Do we invite Aunt Rose who was married to our beloved uncle Abe, even though she has distanced herself from the family since his death? Do we invite Sam now that he is divorced from our cousin Ashley. And what about cousins Sue and David whom we haven't seen or talked to in ten years? Should we invite Steve, an important business acquaintance, who doesn't know our family? The invitation sets the boundaries of mishpachah and friendship. It is a statement of whom you want to be with you when you rejoice and mark a very special time in your lives. But bar/bat mitzvah potentially can be more and should mean more than parents having pride in their child, more than determining the scope of the family circle. It is even of greater value than children demonstrating their retentive memory of haftarah words and trop. It exceeds in importance a young person successfully passing a Jewish, adolescent ordeal. It is more than a joyful family reunion at a service followed by a party - as important as all these elements are. Bar/bat mitzvah marks a spiritual transition. It celebrates the germination of adolescent idealism and religious commitment. This religious significance can be clearly seen from the very term bar and bat mitzvah. What does "bar" or "bat mitzvah" actually mean? You may have seen it translated as "son or daughter of the commandments." But frankly, this literal translation has always sounded strange to my ears. Do the commandments really have children as the phrase "son or daughter of the commandments" seems to imply. Moreover, having grown up with the film "Son of Frankenstein," "son of the commandments" conjures up in my mind a horror movie. A more intelligible and profound rendering of the phrase bar/ bat mitzvah is "member of the mitzvah system," which refers to a youth now being qualified and being expected to perform mitzvot. As a Jewish child moves into adulthood, he or she is called upon to perform a variety of acts that foster altruism and idealism and a sense of closeness to God and identification with the Jewish people. Judaism teaches that only by actually doing Jewish deeds: ritual and religious, as well as moral and ethical, can there be a genuine, rooted and profound feeling of Jewishness. The deed shapes the heart. The mitzvah is what makes a person a Jew. This is why a young person coming of age in Judaism is called a bar or bat mitzvah. The Hebrew words bar and bat merely mean "son and daughter" -- any son or daughter. To be a Jewish son or a Jewish daughter, one has to enter the world of mitzvah. The world of mitzvah is a broad one. It is turning a meal at home – perhaps eaten alone on Friday night - into Shabbat with the family. Bar/bat mitzvah training has educated our children in the requisite skills to bring this transformation of Friday night about. They have learned the kiddush over wine, the prayer for ritually washing hands and the motzi over the challah. They simply need to apply their skills. Let your child, with his or her new adult status, play an adult role in your household. Let your son or daughter be the leader, teaching the family a mitzvah: how to beautifully welcome Shabbat into your home. There is also the mitzvah of eating the Jewish way, called kashrut. I don't think there is any more effective method to identify as a Jew and feel oneself a Jew - day in and day out - than eating Jewishly. For the beginner this can mean observing a few basics such as abstaining from pork products and shell fish and not eating milk and meat together. The next step can be having separate dishes for dairy and meat and only eating from kosher animals, properly slaughtered. Incidentally, by consuming kosher meat that conforms to humane slaughter, you fulfil yet another mitzvah - not causing unnecessary pain to animals. Our sons and daughters, who are usually quite concerned about suffering in general and especially with regard to animals, should find this principle of our dietary laws meaningful to their lives. According to Jewish tradition there are actually 613 mitzvot. It is impractical to review all the rest, but I would like to highlight two more. The first is tzedakah. Our young people who pledge in their bar and bat mitzvah speeches to support a certain charity, should be certain to carry through with their promise. But tzedakah need not only be money. It can be deeds, lovingly performed. It includes bringing toys to the children's wing of a hospital or food to a soup kitchen. It can be taking a homework assignment to a classmate who is ill or settling an argument between friends. One of the most important mitzvot is limud Torah - Jewish study. And, frankly, it is one that is sorely lacking in the consciousness and actions of nearly all the b'nai mitzvah that have stood on this bimah. Of the hundreds of young people who have celebrated their bar or bat mitzvah in the eleven years since this congregation's founding, only one has graduated the combined Hebrew High School sponsored by our local Conservative synagogues. For purposes of comparison, you should know that our closest neighbor, North Shore Synagogue, this past year alone, had 32 students qualifying for confirmation by completing two years of Hebrew High School. Another 16 students achieved Post-Confirmation after completing 4 years of Hebrew High School. I would like to see equal or even larger numbers of our Woodbury Jewish Center b'nei mitzvah continuing their Jewish education in our Hebrew High School program. Until now our attention has been elsewhere. We were preoccupied with building a physical structure, meeting our monthly mortgage payments, and establishing nursery and elementary education for the children in our young families. But now we have a significant teenage population. It is time for our synagogue leadership and parents to address the continued Jewish development of our post-bar/bat youth. What is important for us to understand is that teenage identity formation is not finished by age thirteen. What makes Jewish education effective and lasting is not only its intensity and quality but also its duration. Children do a lot of growing - emotionally and intellectually - between ages thirteen and the time they settle down, marry and have a family. Reflect for a moment on your own lives. Think about how significant the decades of your teens and twenties were to who you are now. Those critical years were full of intellectual and personal growth. It is not less true of youth today. Therefore, it is a strategic mistake to neglect our children's Jewish development in the post bar and bat mitzvah years – the very time that they are undergoing significant maturation in every other facet of their lives. It seems logical to presume that if there is nothing Jewish in our children's lives in those formative years, there may well be nothing Jewish after them. None of us wants that to happen to our children. So let me make some recommendations and I ask you to take them very seriously. I have already advocated for continuing classroom education. But effective Jewish experiences can also be had in other ways. A summer camp like Ramah, with a strong Jewish program, has proven to be enormously successful in getting young people excited about their religious heritage. Our youth program for teens, USY, has also enjoyed immense success. The activities that take place at our synagogue and those that involve other congregations such as Regional dances and Shabbat Study Weekends called Kinusim make Judaism enjoyable and serious at the same time. Have you heard of USY on Wheels? Sponsored by our Conservative Movement, it takes teenagers cross-country and explores all the sites that other tours you know about include. But in addition to seeing America coast to coast, the teenagers are exposed to the Jewish contribution to our nation. They see historical synagogues and cemeteries and Jewish museums. They get a chance to interact with Jews in the south and mid-west whose way of life is vastly different from Jewish life on long Island. USY on Wheels provides a broadening Jewish experience for our teens that will last their lifetime. But that is not all. Our national youth movement also sponsors USY Pilgrimage that tours Israel. Those of you who have been to Israel know that there is no Jewish experience like it. No other encounter brings home the history of the Jewish people and the glories of Jewish life. If strengthening the Jewish identity of your son or daughter concerns you, your child's visit to Israel with other Jewish teenagers is an important part of the solution. Many of our teens have grandparents who were survivors of the holocaust. USY Israel Pilgrimage offers the added option of visiting sites in Eastern Europe including the concentration camps were millions of Jews lost their lives. It is an unparalleled opportunity for our sons and daughters to learn about the holocaust and its eternal lessons in a personal way at the very sites where the holocaust occurred. You can imagine the effect on Jewish teenagers of that twin experience: coming face to face with the massive destruction of our people and then flying to Israel and seeing first hand the Jewish people reborn in its own land. Until now you have heard only my voice, my advocacy. Now hear the voice of an articulate young man quoted by Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin of nearby Port Washington. It is found in his book about bar/bat mitzvah, Putting God on your Guest List. This is the young man's marvelously poignant story as he told it to the author. "Bar mitzvah for me and my friends was a big party and expensive gifts and a lot of questions about ‘How much did you take in?' I looked back on it and said to myself, ‘Where was the religious grandeur and the power?' I rebelled. At college, I got involved with Native Americans. Their spirituality and religious ecstasy is what I've always wanted to find in Judaism. "I went on the Sacred Run to support the rights of Native Americans. We ran across Canada and across Europe. Somehow we wound up at Auschwitz. My Native American friends said to me, ‘This is your tribe's place of overwhelming darkness. Will you lead us in a ceremony at this place?' "I didn't know what to say. I called my mother collect–from Auschwitz!–and asked her to find the prayer book that I got when I became a bar mitzvah. It was somewhere in my room. Then I asked her to read me the transliteration of the Kaddish prayer, so that I could write it down and say it at Auschwitz. "Rabbi," he said, "I want to come back to my people. I really want to find that spirit again. My Native American friends sent me back to my tribe." Bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah can be the gateway welcoming our young people into their tribe. Their preparation for this milestone that begins years in advance introduces them to the world of mitzvot and to the moral wisdom of the Jewish people. And it does even more than that. Thirteen-year-olds being told that their reason for being here on earth is to perform sacred deeds - from study and worship to helping others and participating in efforts to improve our world, raises them above the narcissism of teenage self-preoccupation. It teaches them that life is not just about me and what I want. It is also about others and what they need. It is about community and how we must serve it and participate in it. We parents have a precious opportunity to raise an exceptional, new generation of Jews. Utilizing the many and varied Jewish experiences that Israel, the American Jewish community, this synagogue and your own home have to offer, let us put into raising this generation a very special and our most determined effort. L'shanah tova.
May God bless you and your loved ones in the new year ahead.
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