I saw the blinking light on my answering machine and listened to the frantic voice of my girlfriend, Debbie, as I put the groceries away. “Heeeeeelp! Jason says he doesn’t want to have a bar mitzvah anymore. What should I do? We’ve got the date and the place and I’ve hired a DJ already. He’s making me crazy. Call me.”
“Wow, what a bummer,” I thought to myself. What would I do if my own son decided he just wasn’t into having a bar mitzvah? Would I force him to do it? Cajole him with promises of gifts and rewards? Guilt-trip him into having one because I know that deep down he will be sorry later?
The honest answer is that I would be tempted to do all of those things (plus add in a few zingers about how it would just kill his grandparents!), but I would also use my best parenting skills to help him realize that sometimes the decisions we make are significant, not because they make us happy, but because they are connected to important values, like Jewish learning, tradition and family.
And yet, I also know that every child and each family is different, deserving a unique look at the right time for a meaningful bar or bat mitzvah experience. That truth was made clear to me a few years ago when I taught a group of college students, none of whom had ever had a bar or bat mitzvah but wanted one now that they were in college. Some, like Debbie’s son Jason, didn’t want one when they were younger because they weren’t ready to commit to the hard work and study. Others came from interfaith families in which it wasn’t an option, or from Jewish communities to which they didn’t feel connected.
After they left home, my students realized they had a personal desire to learn more about Judaism in order to understand their relationship to their faith, traditions, God and Israel. As a teacher, I was honored and thrilled to be a part of their spiritual journey towards Jewish adulthood. As a mother of a college student myself, I was rewarded by having this very intimate opportunity to learn about the struggles, fears, doubts and joys of college life and be able to offer my students a Jewish lens through which to view their lives.
Each student approached the task with commitment, enthusiasm and a genuine intellectual curiosity that was palpable in our weekly 90-minute classes. We studied Jewish history, holidays, ethics, rituals and liturgy while building a trusting spiritual community. We shared holidays and birthday, news about boyfriends and pre-exam anxiety. In our effort to find meaning in and from Judaism, we struggled together with issues of faith, family, doubt and fear.
The year of study culminated in a Shabbat morning service where each student was called up to read from the Torah and offer a personal interpretation or teaching about something important that he or she had learned or grappled with during the year.
It is true that “words from the heart reach the heart” and anyone who had ever struggled with issues of faith, God or family was moved that Shabbat morning by the group of beaming co-eds on the bimah. Individually, and as a community, they had engaged in the type of serious Jewish study that would now enable them to become responsible Jewish adults. And that, in a nutshell, is at the heart of what it means to become a bar or bat mitzvah.
I called back my friend Debbie and we talked for a while about what she should do. I urged her to talk with Jason and try to understand what had caused him to change his mind. Perhaps it was the stress of learning the Torah portion, or the fear that he wouldn’t be able to participate in other school activities if he was busy with Hebrew school. In the end, whatever the decision, I knew that it would have to be one that his family, as a Jewish family, could accept.
Perhaps Jason and his family would be better served if they considered the words of the German Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig who, when asked if he put on tefillin each morning, responded “Not yet.” Rosenzweig knew he was not ready to commit, but didn’t close the door on the possibility that someday he might be. What a powerful message for Jews of all ages — to envision the potential that remains open to us throughout our lives to embrace meaningful Jewish living when we are ready to do so.
Amy Hirshberg Lederman (amyhirshberglederman.com) is an award-winning author and syndicated columnist, international speaker, Jewish educator and attorney. Her stories appear in the Chicken Soup series, and her book One God, Many Paths: Finding Meaning and Inspiration in Jewish Teachings won the 2009 Best Book Award from the Arizona Book Publishing Association.
