Conservative Judaism, Winter, 2004
Defining Community: Bar/Bat Mitzvah Ritual: in American Reform and Conservative Congregations as an Expression of Community Identity and Values
by Barat Ellman
“At five years of age – Scripture; at ten, Mishnah; at 13, Mitzvoth.” This passage from Mishnah Avot 5:21 is the oft-quoted source for the ritual now known as Bar Mitzvah. While Bar Mitzvah did not emerge as a ritual event until the 14th century in Germany, the Medieval codes initially invoked this source to restrict a male’s performance of certain religious activities such as the laying of tefillin or servings as shliach tzbor in a congregation prior to age 13.
The Bar Mitzvah ritual that developed in the 14th century in Germany came to be associated with public chanting of Torah on any of the days Torah is read in synagogue (Monday, Thursday, or Shabbat), along with delivering a d’var Torah on the Torah portion and laying tefillin (if a weekday) all for the first time. In addition, medieval German accounts refer to the custom of the bar mitzvah’s family making a feast for members of the community and to the recitation of a public blessing by bar mitzvah’s father during the feast, all of which suggests that the community as a whole shared in welcoming the new adult member into its midst.
Ivan G.Marcus, Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press), 120-124.
With the exception of the medieval indifference as to whether the ritual was celebrated on Shabbat or a weekday, all of the medieval ritual’s elements – inaugural public reading of Torah (which in the medieval context included being called for the corresponding aliyah) and delivering a d’var Torah – are found in the modern Bar (and Bat) Mitzvah rituals performed in American Reform and Conservative synagogues. But are the symbolic content, the meaning of the elements of the ritual, its function and the community values it illuminates, the same as in the original context in which the Bar Mitzvah ritual was born?
The function of the ritual in its medieval context was to bridge the gap created by the boundary imposed by the codes between childhood and adulthood in terms of the religious obligation.
Ibid, p. 123 In the context of pre-emancipation Jewry, it was assumed that all Jewish males, upon reaching the age of adulthood as determined by the halakhah would assume the obligations of adulthood, which fell upon him automatically. The ritual functioned to dramatize publicly that the 13-year old boy had made the transition from childhood to adulthood. As sociologist of medieval Jewish life, Ivan Marcus writes:
The result of this important cultural process was that a boundary was being created at age thirteen between childhood and adulthood, after that age. In practice, as well as according to sacred texts, age thirteen and a day now meant something. Only then, and not before could males put on tefillin, get called up to the Torah in the synagogue for the first time, and be counted in a minyan.
Ibid.
The ritual marked the entry of a Jewish boy into the community of Jewish adults, and his performance in the ritual demonstrated publicly his acceptance of adult male Jewish practice. To use Clifford Geertz’s terminology, the ritual, and the new bar mitzvah performance within it, was both a symbolic demonstration of the boy’s transformation from child to adult, and a model for future behavior, describing the normative behavior the boy had assented to take on as religious obligation.
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture, (New York: Basic Books: 1973), 93.
Bar Mitzvah in American Reform and Conservative Jewish Congregations Today
The celebration of a child’s becoming bar or bat mitzvah endures as a significant event in American Jewish life today. Indeed, it is often in order to be able to celebrate one’s children’s Bar/Bat Mitzvahs that a great proportion of families join synagogues and send their children to the synagogue’s religious school, as synagogues generally require both membership and a specified minimum number of years of attendance at those school for the children whose Bar/Bat Mitzvahs will be celebrated on their bimot. Commemoration of a child’s becoming bar/bat mitzvah does not simply endure as a life cycle event; it stands out as a prominent occasion in the Jewish life cycle to a greater degree than it did in the medieval context. In America today, where being Jewish and observing Jewish practices is voluntary, a child’s becoming bar and bat mitzvah and the celebration of that event, far from being automatic, signals the perpetuation of the values of the Jewish community in which the event takes place. For many American Jews, Bar/Bat Mitzvah is the definitive Jewish event in one’s life, looked back to in adulthood as an important achievement and as the definitive expression of Jewish identity. Significantly, as an event celebrated in a congregational setting, the Bar/Bat Mitzvah celebration reflects the norms and values of the congregation and therefore represents a ritual moment that can help illuminate certain aspects of the Jewish communities in which they take place:
How does the community conceptualize itself?
How does one enter the community?
What are the religious values of the community?
What does it mean to be a Jew (i.e., an adult Jew) in the community?
What are the structures and mechanisms for building and strengthening community?
In this paper, I will look at Bar/Bat Mitzvah as celebrated in two synagogues, an egalitarian Conservative synagogue (Synagogue X) and a Reform synagogue (Temple Y) to explore the communal values expressed through the enactment of the ritual. The two synagogues are located in one of the outer boroughs of New York City, roughly within two miles of each other, and for the most part they draw on the same pool of sophisticated urban professional individuals and families for their memberships. They both date from the post-Civil War expansion of German, followed by Eastern European, Jews into New York. Temple Y’s membership is more than twice the size of Synagogue X’s, with approximately 650 family memberships compared to Synagogue X’s 300 family memberships. Temple Y, more welcoming toward intermarried families both because of the Reform movement’s acceptance of patrilineal descent and from its own institutional commitment to outreach to interfaith families, probably has a greater percentage of intermarried families (roughly 30-35%) in its membership than does Synagogue X, but this difference is not confirmed. Synagogue X has a larger percentage of shomer shabbat and shomer mitzvoth members than does Temple Y, but the shomer shabbat and shomer mitzvoth members remain a minority within the congregation.
My descriptions of the two rituals are based partially on personal observations. I have attended both synagogues for several years and have had the opportunity to witness Bar/Bat Mitzvah at both. In addition, my comments are based on an interview with the Rabbi at Temple Y and informal conversations with the Rabbi at Synagogue X, as well as meetings with the latter as the parent of a bat mitzvah.
Context for Bar/Bat Mitzvah celebration
Beth Montemurro, in her article on the Bridal Shower, “’You Go ‘Cause You Have to’: The Bridal Shower as a Ritual of Obligation,” notes:
As events or activities that are repeated over time, rituals hold special cultural and symbolic meanings, not only to those who are directly involved, but also to members of the culture in which a ritual takes place.
Beth Montemurro, “’You go ‘Cause You Have to’: The Bridal Shower as a Ritual of Obligation,” Symbolic Interaction 25:1 (2002), p. 70.
Similarly, when we look at how Bar/Bat Mitzvah is celebrated in the context of the two synagogues referred to above, many differences emerge, and these are suggestive for beginning to understand the character of the two communities that the synagogues bring together and shape.
In order to provide a context for interpreting the Bar/Bat Mitzvah celebrations in the two synagogues, I will first offer a description of the Shabbat evening and morning services at the two synagogues. Next I will turn to the Bar/Bat Mitzvah celebrations themselves, beginning with the preparation required by the two synagogues respectively and continuing with descriptions of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah celebrations themselves.
The Shabbat Context for Bar/Bat Mitzvah Celebration
Because Bar/Bat Mitzvah celebrations at both synagogues are held on Shabbat, before looking at that ritual, we must first look at how Shabbat is celebrated at the two synagogues to understand the context in which this ritual is performed.
1) Shabbat at Synagogue X
Shabbat services at Synagogue X include a weekly Friday evening Kabbalat Shabbat service and Saturday morning traditional service (Shachrit, Torah service [with full kri’ah, i.e., complete reading of the week’s Torah portion], and musaf), plus a once- a-month Minhah/Maariv service followed by Havdalah. Held from 6:15-7:00/7:15, Kabbalat Shabbat draws modest attendance (+/-30 people), mainly from among those who live close by, and families with very young children. The service is lay-led, includes all the traditional elements of Kabbalat Shabbat (psalms, silent amidah, magen avot, kiddush), and is intended to precede Shabbat evening observance at home.
The Saturday morning service is Synagogue X’s primary Shabbat worship service. Approximately 100 members attend regularly. Lay participation in all aspects of the service is high. Members serve as shli’ach tzibur (there is no paid cantorial position), read Torah and haftorah, serve as gabbaim, and occasionally deliver the week’s d’var Torah. The assignment of shli’ach tzibur for shachrit is fixed through a rotation system; the assignment of the musaf shli’ach tzibur is typically made on the spot and is often given to post-b’nei mitzvah members. Approximately 15 congregants form a pool of regular Torah readers, and new readers are both encouraged and not uncommon. It is worth noting that, although halakhic standards of reading are maintained in the Torah service, the gabbaim exercise a good deal of leniency when new or less experienced readers chant Torah. In fact, conflicts between congregants have arisen over the question of which to privilege: halakhic standards for Torah reading or the prohibition against public rebuke or embarrassing of people.
With respect to the assignment of the seven aliyot, Synagogue X follows the practice of reserving the first two aliyot for Kohenim and Leviim. If the gabbaim are aware of congregants who have a personal event to commemorate, they endeavor to give aliyot to them. During the Torah service, the rabbi offers a mishaberach, or prayer for healing, for those in the community who are ill. This is an opportunity for members to rise and name individuals for whom they are concerned. The service concludes with a generous kiddush and oneg, which offers a chance for congregants to socialize.
Bar/Bat Mitzvah at Synagogue X is superimposed on, and integrated into, the existing Shabbat morning service. One can tell a Bar/Bat Mitzvah will be celebrated by a few relatively discrete clues (usually the family of the bar/bat mitzvah provides a basket of special yarmulkahs at the entrance to the synagogue, and the extended family more often than not fills up the front seats on one side of the sanctuary). However, outside of those clues, the service is unchanged when a Bar/Bat Mitzvah is celebrated.
2) Shabbat at Temple Y
As is the case at most Reform synagogues in America, at Temple Y, the primary Shabbat worship service is the Friday night service held at 8:15 p.m. Although Temple Y offers additional Friday night options, the 8:15 p.m. service is the occasion that draws the regular Shabbat worshippers.
In addition to this service, in 1999 Temple Y began offering an early Kabbalat Shabbat service at 6:15, intended primarily, though not exclusively, for families with younger children. Once a month a “family service” intended for families with pre-school and kindergarten age children replaces the Kabbalat Shabbat service. On that same evening, Temple Y holds a potluck dinner intended to precede the 8:15 service.
The 8:15 service draws 60-90 congregants regularly and is the worship occasion for lay involvement. Each week a different congregant is invited to light Shabbat candles and recite the blessing over them publicly. In keeping with Reform liturgy, the amidah is recited out loud, led by the Cantor. Also in keeping with Reform liturgy, Torah is read on Friday night, and congregants are called upon to open and close the Ark, and for aliyot, of which there are typically three. The rabbi typically reads Torah, though on rare occasions, a congregant will do so. The Torah is recited rather than chanted. (The chanting of Torah is reserved for Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur and for Bar/Bat Mitzvahs.) The reading typically includes 20-30 verses of the week’s portion. The Friday night service is also the occasion for the rabbi’s sermon to the congregation. The Friday night service concludes with a generous dessert and coffee oneg, which performs the same socializing function, as does the afternoon kiddush at Synagogue X.
Temple Y’s Friday evening service is understood to be “the Congregation’s service,” in contrast to the Saturday morning service, which is acknowledged to be turned over entirely to the celebration of Bar/Bat Mitzvahs in the congregation. Celebration of Bar/Bat Mitzvahs was deliberately excluded from the Friday night service and relegated to Saturday morning in order to preserve the intimate, “family” character of the primary evening service. On Saturday mornings, Temple Y offers two services: a “Bar/Bat Mitzvah” Saturday morning service and, as off 2001, a lay-led “minyan service” in its chapel for a small segment of Temple Y ’s membership who wanted a Shabbat morning service but did not want to participate in the service dedicated to Bar/Bat Mitzvahs. Largely non-congregant guests, who are therefore strangers to the synagogue, attend the Bar/Bat Mitzvah service. The “minyon service” attracts some 20 to 30 people, a size that preserves its intimacy. Most of this service is in Hebrew and occasionally the Torah is chanted rather than recited as on Friday evenings. Both services are scheduled to end at the same time in order to allow the attendees of both to come together for a small kiddush consisting of wine and challah. In reality, the two services do not merge, even at the kiddush, the kiddush being principally part of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah celebration.
The Bar/Bat Mitzvah Ritual
Having looked at the celebration of Shabbat at Synagogue X and Temple Y, we are now in a position to look at how Bar/Bat Mitzvah is celebrated at each of them and how that celebration intersects with regular Shabbat worship. As we will see, the celebration of Bar/Bat Mitzvah, from the child’s preparation, to his or her performance on the Bima, to the Rabbi’s and congregation’s response to that performance, express the respective core values of the two synagogues. The differences we will observe in throughout that process as executed in the two synagogues help to illuminate differences in their communal norms, their values and their communal identity.
1) Preparation
At both Synagogue X and Temple Y, Bar/Bat Mitzvah is the culmination of a year or more of religious school instruction. In the year prior to the Bar/Bat Mitzvah, children at both synagogues are expected to become familiar with the worship service in which their Bar/Bat Mitzvah will take place. Synagogue X runs a Junior Congregation nine months of the year intended to acquaint children with the basic elements of the Shabbat morning service. Children help lead the service and lead discussions of the Torah portion. Synagogue X requires all of its religious school students to attend a specified number of Junior Congregation services. In the year of Bar/Bat Mitzvah, children are expected to begin to come to the main sanctuary where they participate in the regular Shabbat morning service.
Temple Y has no junior congregation. Children learn the basic elements of the liturgy through tefillah held during religious school hours. In the year before their Bar/Bat Mitzvah, children are required to attend three Shabbat morning services (the Bar/Bat Mitzvah service) prior to their own Bar/Bat Mitzvah. Often at that service, they serve as ushers with their parents to assist guests to the synagogue.
The Torah service is the centerpiece of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ritual at both synagogues. With respect to preparation for the Torah service, however, the approaches of the two synagogues differ greatly.
At Synagogue X, children are expected to learn how to read cantillation markings (trope) for Torah and Haftorah. The object is to enable the children not only to “perform” at their Bar/Bat Mitzvah, but also to develop a synagogue skill which they can bring to other Shabbat services. Indeed Synagogue X encourages post-Bar/Bat Mitzvah children to read their Torah portion again the year after their Bar/Bat Mitzvah. The fairly large pool of lay Torah readers at Synagogue X signifies that reading Torah is an aspect of adult practice and adult synagogue participation. Through Bar/Bat Mitzvah, therefore, children join the community of readers and demonstrate their new status as Jewish adults.
At Temple Y the case is very different. Until 2001, with the appointment of a full-time cantor, no one at Temple Y taught Torah trope. Bar/Bar Mitzvah students were taught to chant their Torah portion by means of a tape, which they then memorized. An ability to read Hebrew correctly was expected, but this expectation did not extend to an ability to read from the Torah scroll (i.e. without vowels). Hence it was common practice for nearly all b’nei mitzvah to read from a photocopy of the printed Torah which was placed on a card and laid on the scroll out of view of the congregation.
Today, the practice at Temple Y is to teach those children “who have some musicality” how to read the cantillation markings. For those for whom this seems difficult, however, the tape method prevails. Children who have “no musicality – that is who are tone-deaf,” in the rabbi’s words, are given the option of simply reading their portion rather than chanting it. With chanting of Torah not part of the community’s regular Shabbat experience (as noted above, the community hears Torah read on Friday night and it is not chanted), there is no expectation or context for chanting Torah as a regular part of Shabbat observance or adult participation in the community’s worship. The Bar/Bat Mitzvah needn’t know how to chant Torah because doing so is a one-time event.
2) The Synagogue X Bar/Bat Mitzvah Ritual
At Synagogue X, the bar/bat mitzvah will, at a minimum, wear a tallit for the first time in synagogue,
Interestingly, wearing a tallit to indicate one’s becoming a Jewish adult is a modern innovation. In medieval times, and still in many Orthodox communities, a boy did not wear a tallit until he became chatan or bridegroom. be called for the maftir aliyah, chant the maftir from the Torah scroll, chant the haftorah, and deliver a d’var Torah on his or her Torah portion. Some children read one or more aliyot from the Torah scroll in addition to the maftir. Very rarely, a child will only recite the blessings for the maftir, and chant only the haftorah, but nothing from the sefer Torah. Typically, members of the bar/bat mitzvah’s family will recite some of the aliyot. Indeed the custom is for the child’s parents to take the seventh aliyah (i.e., the one immediately preceding their child’s) so that they can remain on the bima while the bar/bat mitzvah reads from the Torah.
This is in keeping with the traditional practice in which one who is called for an aliyah remains on the bima both for his/her aliyah and for the one after it.
Unless the bar/bat mitzvah has a family member who wishes to serve as shli’ach tzibur, the congregant assigned to that Shabbat leads the davening. The Bar/Bat Mitzvah may or may not lead the Torah service and may or may not lead Musaf. Both roles are open to bar/bat mitzvahs, and many children take them on, but not all.
If the bar/bat mitzvah’s family includes a Kohen and/or Levite, that [those] individual[s] may take the first two aliyot; otherwise a Kohen and Levite from the congregation take them.
Following the Torah and haftorah reading the congregation “congratulates” the bar/bat mitzvah with the singing of Siman tov u’mazel tov (which is also sung to recognize other lifecycle events such as impending marriage, baby namings, marriage and anniversaries). Sometimes the congregation showers the child with candy provided by the family. After this gesture of approval and welcome, the child delivers his or her d’var Torah.
3) The Temple Y Bar/Bat Mitzvah Ritual
Wearing a tallit, formerly an anomaly at Temple Y, has grown in popularity among those who regularly attend a Saturday morning service. (That includes the rabbi, the cantor, the synagogue president, and most of those who attend the minyan service). Accordngly, most (though not all) bar/bat mitzvahs at Temple Y wear a tallit for their Bar/Bat Mitzvah. The Torah reading for the Bar/Bat Mitzvah service typically consists of +/- 20 verses divided into three aliyot given, respectively, to grandparents, parents and the bar/bat mitzvah. The bar/bat mitzvah typically reads all the 20 verses, although on some occasions, the child will read only for one aliyah with the rabbi covering the remaining verses. Most bar/bat mitzvahs chant their Torah portion, but some will read part of it in English. Some bar/bat mitzvahs will chant the haftorah, but many chant only the opening verses, and then continue reading in English. Some children read the entire haftorah in English.
4) The D’var Torah
Along with being called for an aliyah and reading Torah publicly, the third major part of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ritual is the d’var Torah. At Synagogue X, the rabbi introduces the d’var Torah as “a teaching based on the Torah portion.” At Temple Y, the d’var Torah is known as the “Bar (or Bat) Mitzvah speech.” In both synagogues, the d’var Torah is the child’s opportunity to show that he/she understood what he/she chanted, and to demonstrate his/her connection with that text and with the Jewish values embedded in it.
Customarily, at Synagogue X, the d’var Torah is text-based, including, typically, citations from the Mishnah and/or Talmud, and from other traditional Rabbinic sources, as well as from the works of modern Jewish thinkers. Some d’vrei Torah strive to show the text’s relevance for modern life; others adhere more closely to the Torah text itself. But significantly, whatever the theme or emphasis, every d’var Torah at Synagogue X, including the d’vrei Torah given by bar/bat mitzvahs, includes some Hebrew, quoted in the original and then translated.
D’vrei Torah at Temple Y draw much less heavily on traditional Jewish texts. When they are included, the most cited source is the aggadic midrash. There is almost never a reference to Talmud or any legal texts. In contrast to the Synagogue X d’var Torah, at Temple Y Hebrew is never included in the Bar/Bat Mitzvah speech. Indeed to include Hebrew, even if translated, would seem an act of disrespect towards those in the congregation who would not be able to understand it. A typical d’var torah will stress personal reaction to the text and its applicability -- or lack thereof – to the world around the bar/bat mitzvah.
5) Conclusion of the Ritual
At the end of the Shabbat Service at both synagogues, the rabbi and president or other synagogue official of the congregation direct some words to the bar/bat Mitzvah and present him/her with a gift symbolizing the transition marked by the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ritual.
At Synagogue X, the practice is for the rabbi to talk with the bar/bat mitzvah about the Torah portion – to amplify, perhaps, the ideas expressed in the d’var Torah or to build on discussions the two had in preparation for the Bar/Bat Mitzvah. The idea conveyed is that the bar/bat mitzvah is part of a community of Torah learners, represented by the Rabbi who turns to the child as an equal.
After the Rabbi speaks, the president of the congregation adds a few more words relating to the Torah portion and then gives the child a gift of a Chumash. Finally the religious school chair presents the child with a kiddush cup. Both the Chumash and the kiddush cup are items for daily and weekly use in a traditional Jewish home. Together, they convey to the child the message that he/she has entered a community of traditional observance including regular Torah study and the celebration of Shabbat.
At Temple Y, the rabbi nearly always begins his comments to the bar/bat mitzvah with the words, ‘You can relax now. You did it.” From there, his words mitzvah focus on the value of responsibility and how the child’s fulfillment of the expectations pertaining to becoming bar/bat mitzvah demonstrated his/her acceptance of responsibility as definitive of being an adult Jew in the community. The rabbi consciously stresses this theme, taking an element of the Torah reading, if possible, or an element of the child’s d’var Torah to connect the idea of responsibility with Torah.
After he has finished speaking, the rabbi presents the bar/bat mitzvah with two gifts: a High Holy Day Prayer book, and a certificate attesting to the fact that the child indeed became bar/bat mitzvah. Just as the presents given at Synagogue X symbolized adult practice in the conservative context, so too here the meaning of these two gifts is highly significant. The High Holy Days represent the one time of year that the Temple Y community can be counted on to come together for prayer. Even Friday night, central as it is to the community’s Shabbat worship, only draws a small segment of the congregation. The gift of the High Holy Day prayer book invites the child to join the congregation when it will come together in its entirety. Moreover, Temple Y gives a copy of the High Holy Day prayer book to new members when they join the congregation. The presentation of the book at the Bar/Bat Mitzvah seems to say to the child, “You are now a member of this synagogue in your own right.”
The certificate has its own meaning. Rabbi Y believes that the primary object of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah at Temple Y is to give the child a sense of connection to being Jewish. He or she should “feel” more strongly Jewish as a result of the preparation for, and the experience of, the Bar/Bat Mitzvah. He or she should be able to look back on the Bar/Bat Mitzvah as a personal achievement, and as an experience that links him/her to other Jews. The certificate is, therefore, a “keepsake” or a “souvenir,” a reminder that the child did that which Jews do – namely, celebrated becoming a bar/bat mitzvah.
Community values and identity as reflected by the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ritual
This brief overview of the two Bar/Bat Mitzvah rituals illuminates two very different concepts of Jewish community and of Bar/Bat Mitzvah as an experience within the Jewish community.
At Temple Y, Bar/Bat Mitzvah is a personal experience. As the rabbi emphasized in our conversation, “The kid is the focus.” The object of the ritual is to give the child a valuable Jewish experience that will support, in his words, “a life-long journey of Jewish connectivity.” In addition, by becoming bar/bat mitzvah, the child demonstrates the ability to take responsibility for completing a task.
That task is adapted to the ability of the child, for a value is placed on the feelings of the bar/bat mitzvah. Hence, it is equally acceptable for the bar/bat mitzvah to read or chant the Torah portion; to read an aliyah’s worth of verses or do all the reading; and to read some or all of the haftorah in English. The point is that the child should feel no discomfort or embarrassment about how or what he/she is able to do on the bima. The ritual’s goal is for the child to feel that he/she has accomplished something important, and that the job was well done. This last point bears emphasizing: the accomplishment in question is an act that is done, completed. “You can sigh a sigh of relief now,” Rabbi Y says to a bar/bat mitzvah at the end of ritual. “It’s over.”
The Temple Y Bar/Bat Mitzvah ritual also seeks to instill in the child a sense of connection with others who have crossed the same hurdle. Becoming bar/bat mitzvah is like having joined a club of those who have done the same thing. In sum, the event is a one-time experience, something to look back on and from which to draw strength and feelings of connections. It is an emotional “high,” the memory of which will fuel and nourish the child’s Jewish identity in the future.
The Temple Y community understands religion and religious rituals as things to experience and feel. The Temple’s decision to separate the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ritual from its primary Shabbat service is indicative of its privileging individual feelings over such values as collectivity. It matters how the religious experience of Shabbat worship feels and those feelings must be protected. The Friday night service is intimate and familial. The Bar/Bat Mitzvah service, by bringing strangers to the synagogue and being a performance by one person before an audience, is incompatible with those feelings of intimacy and familiality. But the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ritual is also about personal feelings and individuality. For the duration of the ritual, the child is the star. His/her family members are the co-stars. The assembled guests are the audience.
At Synagogue X, the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ritual is an initiation rite. The child formally enters the community of adults by behaving as they do. He/she demonstrates mastery of the skills necessary to be an active participant in the service. In fact, if the child continues to come to synagogue in the weeks and months after his/her Bar/Bat Mitzvah, he/she will often be invited to play an adult role again – to lead musaf, if he/she did so for his/her Bar/Bat Mitzvah or to take an aliyah. Often on the anniversary of a Bar/Bat Mitzvah, the child will be invited to chant his/her Torah or haftorah portion again. The conclusion of the ritual underscores this message. Both the words directed and the gifts presented to the child reflect this meaning. Together they say, “you have become part of the community; you can (will) continue to function as you did today; you’re an equal with us.” Although the same sense of achievement acknowledged at Temple Y is noted as well at Synagogue X, Bar/Bat Mitzvah is not treated only as an experiential high. Rather it is presented as a model for how the bar/bat mitzvah can or will live as a Jew in the community. There is a way to behave as a Jew, the ritual affirms. By participating in it, the child ‘accepts’ that norm. He/she demonstrates understanding of its elements by joining the group of lay participants in the service, engaging in Torah study symbolized by the chumash, and accepting religious responsibility, symbolized by the kiddush cup.
At the risk of oversimplification, we can summarize the differences between the two communities as follows:
Temple Y Synagogue X
Focus on the individual and individual’s Focus on the community as a collective.
feelings.
The individual bar/bat mitzvah is in the Through the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ritual,
spotlight. Object of the ritual is his/her the individual joins the community.
feeling of fulfillment and achievement.
Non-hierarchical. (i.e., ritual can be Hierarchical. Standards have authority
adapted to participant’s ability. His/her and participant is expected to meet them.
knowledge level is less important than are (i.e. ability and knowledge of how to
his/her feelings of satisfaction and comfort). perform the ritual correctly is valued).
Having done the ritual it is what counts. Ability to continue doing the ritual is what counts.
Satisfaction comes from knowing “I did it.” Satisfaction comes from knowing “I can do it
again.”
The Community values “responsibility,” The Community values traditional norms;
understood as a personal ethic. “responsibility” equals religious obligation.
Community values authenticity and Community upholds the authority of
Sincerity. traditional norms.
While this comparison helps us to analyze how the two communities conceptualize themselves and Jewishness, and what Bar/Bat Mitzvah means to each in light of their concepts of Jewishness, it imperfectly dichotomizes the two communities and the actual practice of the individuals who make them up. As noted at the beginning of this paper, the memberships of the two synagogues are more alike than different, even though by joining one congregation or the other, individuals have, so to speak, accepted the conceptualizations of their synagogue and its role in creating Jewish community. At Synagogue X, for instance, even though the ritual implies the Bar/Bat mitzvah’s acceptance of a set of norms of Jewish adulthood that are traditional and halakhic, and it implies that the child will repeat the religious acts performed during the ritual, many post-Bar/Bat Mitzvah children rarely come to synagogue again. Many do not continue Jewish study or Shabbat observance. Nevertheless, for the community, the message makes sense. The Synagogue X Bar/Bat Mitzvah ritual works because its participants have a “prior acceptance of authority,” to use Clifford Geertz’s language (Geertz, p. 109). At Synagogue X there is an acknowledged way to conduct Shabbat services, and the Bar/Bat Mitzvah fits into that structure.
Interestingly, when during one extended period at Temple Y, a former rabbi at Temple Y attempted to convey Synagogue X-like messages to Bar/Bat mitzvah children at his synagogue, those messages fell flat. He would close the ritual by saying to the child something like, “You read so beautifully today. We look forward to your coming back on other Shabbat mornings to read Torah again and lead us in prayer again.” But the message was disingenuous. Leaving aside the admitted reality that the child had not learned to chant Torah but only to chant his/her portion, the message lacked credibility because the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ritual was not a repeatable event. A Shabbat morning service in which to read Torah and lead the congregation did not exist, for subsequent Saturday mornings would be devoted to future Bar/Bat Mitzvahs. The child and the guests all knew that this was a one-time experience. It was not meant to lay the groundwork for future reenactments of the ritual, but to be a vehicle for responsible fulfillment of an obligation and to create a repository of feelings that would nourish the child’s sense of Jewishness for the future. The rabbi tried to impose foreign values on the ritual.
Some Implications of the Comparison between the Two Rituals
Our analysis of two Bar/Bat Mitzvah rituals, both of which share the same medieval source and both of which involve the basic elements, reveals that they are, nonetheless, quite different events with differing semantic content. The differences between the two rituals derive from the different conceptions of community, of Jewishness, of Jewish adulthood, and of authority within Judaism that are held by the two synagogues in which the rituals take place. The concept and values of the two communities cannot be exchanged willy-nilly. The two rituals are not interchangeable. Even though individuals who make up the two communities may be similar in terms of their secular lives, cultural values and even their Jewish practice, as was noted at the start of this discussion, the respective communities they form share unlike assumptions and conceptualizations, and they do not readily understand or appreciate the rituals performed at each other’s institutions.
A congregant at Temple Y who may know a Synagogue X family to be only moderately observant or perhaps not observant at all, for example, may see hypocrisy in the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ritual enacted by that family. Likewise, a Synagogue X congregant, disturbed by the excessive emphasis on the individual and by the standards of Torah reading at Temple Y, may see a “performance” for an audience that, for her, has no place in Jewish communal worship, and a “dumbing-down” of standards that undermines traditional conceptions of how to learn Jewishly, rather than a ritual adapted to the ability and preferences of an individual child who seeks a personally meaningful experience. Yet each community will find its rituals meaningful in the context in which they are played out.
Let us take, for instance, the hypothetical criticism of Synagogue X concerning the possible disconnect between the tacit acceptance of authority of the standards of Jewish practice and a reality in which individuals do not in fact submit to that authority (i.e. they do not adhere to traditional standards of Jewish practice). Here, the analysis of Maurice Bloch in his article, “Symbols, Song, Dance and Features of Articulation: Is religion an extreme form of traditional authority,” is particularly helpful. Drawing on his observations of the Merina of Madagascar, Bloch claims that ritual employs a form of communication in which “syntactic and other linguistic freedoms are reduced.” The “formal oratory ” which results, he explains, is comparable to that which the Merina termed:
‘speaking the words of the ancestors’…By this is meant that the elders are speaking not on their own behalf but on behalf of the ancestors and the elders of the whole descent group whether living or dead. They are repeating the general truth (my emphasis).
Maurice Bloch, “Symbols, Song, Dance and Features of Articulation: Is Religion an Extreme Form of Traditional Authority?” Archives Europeenes De Sociologie XV (1974), p. 58.
Bloch suggests that the language of ritual need not fit the particular reality of the individuals participating in that ritual, because the purpose of the ritual is to uphold truths. In the case of Bar/Bat Mitzvah at Synagogue X, whether the child will actually continue to attend synagogue, read Torah, lead services, or for that matter, study his/her newly acquired Chumash or celebrate Shabbat with the newly acquired kiddush cup is less important than implied acceptance of the idea that being Jewish is about ritually prescribed behavior, and entering the adult Jewish community involves demonstration one knows how to behave. Again, to cite Bloch:
The interesting question is the disconnection between the religious statement [i.e. the ritual –my add.] and the real world, a disconnection which is produced by the mode of communication of ritual …we see how it serves to hide the actual situation and preserve authority.
Ibid, p. 77.
As for the hypothetical criticism of Temple Y, its individually-oriented, adaptive ritual comports with the ethos and ideology of a non-judgmental, less authoritarian community that values individual meaning as the source from which to draw “Jewish connectivity.” At Temple Y, how to be Jewish takes a back seat to the idea that being Jewish should feel good. Ironically, we can understand Temple Y’s perspective by drawing on Charles S. Liebman’s description (ironically, because he offers it to disparage) of non-orthodox American Judaism. Liebman writes in “Post-War American Jewry: From Ethnic to Privatized Judaism:
This religion speaks in softer terms of individual meaning, journeys of discovery, spirituality, and the search for fulfillment. Its emphases are interpersonal rather than collective. It values authenticity and sincerity over achievement and efficiency. Typically it is non-judgemental, consoling, intuitive, and non-obligating”
Charles Liebman, “Post-War American Jewry: From Ethnic to Privatized Judaism,” in Eliot Abrams and David G. Dalin, eds., Secularism, Spirituality and the Future of American Jewry, (Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center: 2000) p. 11.
While Liebman seeks to impose values, make judgments and draw alarming conclusions, he accurately describes values that are meaningful to a community like that of Temple Y, and for such a community, an individually-oriented, adaptive ritual makes sense.
For the purposes of sociological analysis, we do not need to choose between one ritual and the other. Indeed, what seems borne out by this study is the aptness of each of the two rituals for the community in which it takes place. Temple Y and Synagogue X represent distinct conceptualizations of Jewish community and reflect distinct sets of values. The populations that voluntarily join either of the two congregations choose with their memberships to perpetuate those conceptualizations and values. Those values are expressed in a general fashion in the way Shabbat services are designed and performed in the two congregations. In the ritual of becoming Bar/Bat Mitzvah and its integration into the worship life of the two congregations, the communal identity, values and norms or the congregations are illuminated even more sharply.
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