Bar Mitzvah on the Brain

I have bar mitzvah on the brain.  Of course, as a congregational rabbi, I train bar and bat mitzvah students, teach family classes, counsel parents, and help guide families through this milestone on their Jewish journeys. But lately I have bar mitzvah on the brain because I am planning the upcoming service and celebration for our oldest son.  There seems to be a preponderance of articles and discussions lately about bar and bat mitzvah.  Perhaps this is just something I am noticing in the way that you notice cars when you are in the market to buy a new one, or how the whole world seems to be pregnant when you are hoping to have a baby.

I have found some positive messages, such as the nechemta offered by the author of “Dancing My Own Way”, published this month in The Atlantic. Her story was one that I growing up in the same era as the author, could relate to, even though I did not attend even close to 60 bar and bat mitzvahs in my 13th year. I was moved by Wendy Jaffe’s letter to her daughter, re-posted by one of my friends on Facebook this week, in which she lovingly explains all of the reasons that we cry at bar mitzvahs.

Less positive were some of the more controversial pieces that have appeared within the last few weeks, such as this save-the-date video.  As a rabbi and a mom, I have followed the discussions and news features on this one with interest, but in the end, I hope that for this young man, he will be able to remember his bar mitzvah not for all of the notoriety or controversy that has accompanied his save-the-date video, but for the meaningful ritual of welcome into adult Jewish life that the ceremony is meant to be.

 And I found myself resonating with some of the messages that Alan Sufrin and Patrick Aleph call for in their ideas about rethinking bar and bat mitzvah. Sufrin talks about teaching our children to struggle with themselves and with their Judaism, and how not to see bar and bat mitzvah as an endpoint, but as the new beginning that it is meant to be.  Aleph calls for a radical shift in the way that we educate our bar and bat mitzvah students and their families and prepare them for Jewish adulthood.  He asks why we hold pre-teens to and educational standard that very few adults have achieved, and suggests that we need to re-examine b’nei mitzvah expectations and education.

I can’t stand the idea that the message for young adults today, and for their family members and guests is only about the party, such as in this montage of photographs from bar and bat mitzvah parties.  And I find it scary that there is a market out there for bar and bat mitzvah simcha speeches in which you can hire a rabbi to ghost-write the speech for the parents or even the bar mitzvah boy or bat mitzvah girl’s d‘var torah.

I want my son and the bar and bat mitzvah students in our small congregation to know that bar and bat mitzvah is about preparation for a lifetime as a Jewish adult, that it’s not just an “event” that is all over by the next morning. I want my son to be part of building a Jewish community that is a place where most of these b’nei mitzvah will regularly lead worship, read Torah, and wear their tallitot after the big day is over. Not that this is all there is to becoming a Jewish adult, but these certainly are the responsibilities that a young man or woman is being prepared for.  I hope that I am able to teach them that becoming a bar or bat mitzvah is about attaining a certain level of Jewish literacy, and spiritual development, and that this is an ongoing process of Jewish adulthood.  I want them to learn and grow and question and look at the bigger picture of what they will be able to do within the context of their Jewish lives and our community. That is what it means to become a bar and bat mitzvah, and take the next step on your Jewish journey. And that is why as a rabbi and a mom, I continue to do the important work of helping young people and their families connect to bar and bat mitzvah as a time for learning, practice and celebration, within the context of a meaningful, relevant Jewish life.

(cross posted at Kol Isha, the blog of the Women's Rabbinic Network)

The Pesach Project - Passover in the FSU

40 years ago, in 1974, 26 year old Soviet Jewish dissident Natan Sharansky attended his first seder. For Sharansky, it was not difficult to identify with the Pesach story of freedom told in the Haggadah.  As a dissident, his life was made difficult and KGB agents waited around every corner. Some years later Sharansky led his own seder for the first time, but without the benefit of a Haggadah to read, or any of the elements of the seder to enjoy – no karpas, no matzah, no maror. Sharansky was alone in his prison cell but he did recount the story of Pesach to the prisoners next door through the small window of his cell.

For the community of dissidents in the Soviet Union of the 1970s no symbols were needed to remind them of the power that freedom has to transform society. The compelling story of the Exodus from Egypt, a nation of slaves rising up to defeat the most powerful Pharoah and his army, and lead the people forward to be a free people in their own nation was not ancient history, it was a symbol of of their cause. They understood the bitter tears of slavery that the Jewish people shed while in Egypt. For Sharansky and his fellow prisoners, their lives were a prayer and hope that the yoke of oppression would soon be broken and they would be able to sit reclining at the seder table and taste the flavor of freedom in years to come.  In 1986 Sharansky was finally released from Soviet imprisonment and he made aliyah to Israel. He is now the chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, the organization in charge of immigration and absorption of Jews from the diaspora into Israel.

As we sit at our seder tables this year, it may seem that 40 years is a short time, a blip in history. Yet our people wandered forty years in the desert on the way to the Promised Land.  And our work is not yet done.

Today in the former Soviet Union it is now possible to both learn about and practice Judaism: The Reform movement (known as the World Union for Progressive Judaism  -WUPJ) in the FSU has an active and vital presence: “After over 70 years of Communism, religious oppression and persecution, Jewish communities in the FSU have once again become vibrant with the World Union's assistance."

 

 The first congregation to officially join the Reform movement was Hineini in Moscow in 1990. Today, over 60 congregations in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states, spanning 11 time zones from the Polish border to the Pacific Ocean, have officially become part of the World Union family, which now has offices in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev and Minsk. There are currently six native-born rabbis and a full-time academic program, Machon, (the Institute for Modern Jewish Studies), to locate and train local paraprofessional community workers.

The Progressive movement operates nursery schools and Sunday schools all over the FSU under the leadership of a team of full-time education directors. Netzer Olami, the international Zionist youth movement of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, has become the largest Jewish youth movement in the FSU, operating summer and winter camps for some 1,000 participants, as well as youth clubs and counselor training programs.          

This Pesach, our former WELFTY advisor, Chase Foster, now a 1st year rabbinic student at Hebrew Union College (HUC) in Jerusalem will be participating this year in the Pesach Project, an annual program through HUC and the World Union for Progressive Judaism. He will be traveling along with 20 classmates to Berlin and then to various cities in the FSU - Gomel, Minsk and Lida, Belarus to assist small Jewish communities that do not have the resources to provide for Jewish professionals. Last year’s FSU trip allowed approximately 5,500 people to join around the seder table with community for Passover.  Chase has committed to fundraising $2500 for the Pesach project to help Jews in the FSU celebrate Pesach.  

At this season of freedom, may our love for the Jewish people and our support for outreach and education make this Passover a time of re-commitment to our people and our faith.