Challenge: Free Study 2010-06 (Advanced Editing VII)
Collection: Judaism
Camera: Nikon D200
Lens: Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
Location: Falls Church, VA
Date: Jun 15, 2010
Aperture: 2/8
ISO: 800
Shutter: 1/60
Galleries: Emotive, Children
Date Uploaded: Jun 27, 2010
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Most people talk about "having " a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, including me, but the proper phrase is "becoming" a Bar or Bat Mitzvah. As in, yesterday, my daughter became a Bat Mitzvah. Becoming a Bar or Bat Mitzvah is one of the major life cycle events in a Jew's life: birth, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, wedding, death. Depending on the congregation, there might also be confirmation at the end of 10th grade.
Literally, Bat Mitzvah (baht mits'-vah) means daughter of the commandments. "Bat" is Hebrew for "daughter" ("bar" is "son") and a mitzvah is a commandment (plural is "mitzvot," prounounced mitz-voht'). Because many mitzvot concern how to do good things, the term is very often used as a synonym for "good deed."
An important point is that there's no special Bat Mitzvah ceremony. Rather, around their 13th birthday, a kid leads a normal Shabbat religious service to become a Bat or Bar Mitzvah. Shabbat is the Jewish Sabbath, and like all Jewish holidays, runs from sundown to sundown. In this case, it's from Friday evening to Saturday evening. There's a shorter Friday night service, maybe an hour long (which she didn't lead), and a longer one on Saturday morning, about 90 minutes at our temple, which she did.
The service starts with us walking down the aisle from the back and going up on the on the raised platform at the front, called the bimah (bee'-mah). As parents, we sat on the bimah with her, facing the congregation. It was really nice being able to sit with her and see everyone. I caught the eye of many family and friends and was able to exchange smiles with them. And even up there in front of everyone, we still said things to each other and i rubbed her back to help her feel better.
Sometimes you become a Bat Mitzvah a little before you turn 13 (my daughter's was two weeks before) and sometimes a little after (my younger daughter's will be 3 days after). In Reform (and I'm guessing Conservative) synagogues, there's no difference in how a boy or girl prepares or leads. There's just a slightly different name for it (bat vs. bar).
At our temple, kids really start preparing in 4th grade religious school, when they learn many of the prayers (one could argue it starts even earlier, with learning to read Hebrew). My younger daughter, for instance, has learned the V'ahavata (love God with all your heart) and the Avot v'imahot (recognizing our ancestors).
Specific studying for the Bat Mitzvah starts 8 months in advance. At our temple, kids meet with a tutor every other week. We have so many kids that the norm is to have two kids doing it each Saturday. So a boy also became a Bar Mitzvah at the same time; although they're not close, my daughter and he know each other. They each led several prayers, and they each had a Torah and haftorah portion. All of that's in Hebrew, and they each also wrote a speech in English.
The Torah is the five books of Moses - the first five Books of what we call the Bible and Christians call the Old Testament. The Torah is handwritten on a large scroll. It's a revered document; we don't worship it, but it's highly honored. We read through the entire scoll over the course of each year. There's a set portion for each week of the year; all over the world, Jews are reading the same portion that week. We have a holiday called Simchat Torah in the fall when we start over with Genesis 1: "In the beginning ..."
For this week, my daughter read Numbers 20:1-11. It's the story of how the Jews were wandering in the desert after escaping Egyptian slavery, and lacked water. God told Moses to wave a staff at a rock, and water would flow. Instead, he struck the rock. Water still flowed, but God was mad at Moses for not following his instructions and having faith, so barred Moses from entering the promised land.
The Torah is written without vowels. And there's a chanting scheme. So not only did she have to learn to read a strange set of words she didn't understand, she had t rd wtht vwls. At our temple, our cantor has recorded the entire Torah being chanted, and gives each kid a CD with their portion to practice from, in addition to getting it written with and without vowels. Here's a comparison with and without vowels - the vowels are little marks below the consonants.
Here's my daughter's portion. We don't touch the Torah, instead using a pointer called a yad (yahd). The yahd is pointing at the first word of Numbers 20:1, pronounced "va-yah-voh-voo"
Before reading from the Torah, we remove it from the Ark, a special cabinet. My parents are divorced and remarried, so my kids have 6 grandparents. All of them came up to be with us as we opened the Ark. Then the rabbi handed the Torah to me and I handed it to Kendra, literally passing it from generation to generation. Then he took it back and led us on a walk down the aisle and around the Sanctuary. This is how we share the Torah's presence with the whole congregation. People often touch the Torah with their prayerbooks and then kiss them as a sign of respect. Then we went back up on the bimah nd the rabbi opened the Torah to the point where the kids would read.
The Torah is kept in a special cabinet called an Ark, based on the original Ark of the Covenant that held the pieces of the stone tablets Moses received on Mt. Sinai.
At our temple, each Torah portion is divided into three parts. Each is called an aliyah (a-lee'-yah), and the plural is aliyot (a-lee-yot'). There's a special prayer we recite before and after each aliyah, and it's an honor to invite someone to come forward to read or chant the prayers. For my daughter, it was my dad & stepmom and my mom & stepdad. My wife's parents aren't Jewish, so they didn't come forward. For the third aliyah, my daughter read the prayers herself.
After the Torah readings, the kids then chant selections from the Haftorah, which is a series of associated readings from the Book of Prophets. Typically, the theme relates to the Torah portion, although not always. Something I find interesting is that the chanting scheme for the prayers before and after the Haftorah, and the Haftorah itself, is much more flowery than that for the Torah and associated prayers. For example, a Torah syllable might have two chanted syllables, so "atah" becomes "at-ah-ah," but in Haftorah, it might be chanted "a-a-tah-ah-ah." It doesn't come through here, but it's not monastic, single-tone chanting. The voice does go up and down in tone for each syllable. Here's an example of someone chanting Torah.
After that, the kids deliver their speeches. I've included my daughter's speech below. Before I get to it, lemme tell ya: she isn't kidding in the second paragraph. She knew her stuff cold, as I knew she would when we started. But for her, being the center of attention is her worst nightmare.
People have said "you must be so proud," and it's true. But while I'm proud of her for her hard work, what I'm most proud of is her courage for standing up and leading the congregation. It's not just stage fright; she's willing to be in plays. It's very specifically having everyone focusing on her for herself that she hates so much. Afterward, at the luncheon, many people told me how much they appreciated her sharing such a personal story. As for me, I couldn't see her for half of her speech; my eyes were too full of tears. :)
One more bit of background: a tallit (tah-leet'), also known as a tallis, is a Jewish prayer shawl.
Here's her speech:
My dad has a tallit. He got it from his dad on his Bar Mitzvah, who got it from his parents, or my great-grandparents, on his Bar Mitzvah. That tallit is going to get passed down to me today. That's all special and stuff but with that tallit came a challenge: to become a Bat Mitzvah.
Now that may seem easy, but for me, it wasn't. First, I hate being the center of attention. And becoming a Bat Mitzvah, the point is to be the center of everyone’s attention because that day is all about you. So that was one thing. I sort of got over it. I mean I'm standing up in front of you now with all eyes glued on me so I must've accomplished something. But, I'm also still working on it because believe me I am not having the time of my life right now reading this to you. Don't take it personally.
The second thing was that I just didn't connect with this whole Bat Mitzvah. At the very beginning, I was asked why I was becoming a Bat Mitzvah. I answered, ”because my family wants me to.” My parents were also asked why they thought I was doing this. It was the same answer as mine. My dad also said he hoped during the practicing of the Torah and all of my prayers and writing my speech, maybe something would click and I would have a better reason for doing this. Well, unfortunately that didn't happen for a while.
In fact, that was a big issue when I was writing my speech. The speech is about giving the congregation something to take away from what you’re saying. For example, my friend Elana did her speech on being vegetarian. After I heard it I wanted to be vegetarian. What I got from her speech was that eating animals is cruel. So her speech worked. So when I met with Rabbi Schwartzman to think of ideas for my speech, we came up with a couple: playing on a team because I play soccer and basketball, and being good to the environment. But when I went home to write my speech, none of our ideas worked. None. I just could not think of anything I wanted to write about or that connected with what I felt about becoming a Bat Mitzvah.
I went back to her with my dad and explained the situation. She helped me find ideas of why I did want to become a Bat Mitzvah. Here, I wrote a list.
1. I’m making my parents happy.
2. I’m giving my friends a chance to go to one...although they’ve probably already gone to at least one other.
3. My dad, my grandpa, and my great grandpa and probably past that generation have had Bar Mitzvahs, so it’s cool that I get to do the same thing they did like 100 years ago.
4. I get to celebrate my birthday a different way and have a big party with all my friends and family.
We also talked about why I like being Jewish because that is the reason we have Bar or Bat Mitzvahs: to tell God or really yourself, that you’re ready to be Jewish on your own, not have your parents tell you to be. That took care of my speech. Then I just had to worry about the Hebrew.
I’ve always been a major procrastinator... I get that from my dad I think. So when I found out I had to learn 6 prayers, a Torah portion annnd a Haftorah portion, I thought, I can do that in May. Luckily, my tutor, Melissa Hill-Jones, did not agree with me on that and made me start a whole lot earlier. (Thanks for that) Even with my dad and her nagging at me to study I fell behind schedule. (We all knew it would happen) I just did not want to put time in to studying something I didn't want to do and didn't even see a reason why I should do it. But my dad pushed me hard enough and I finished learning all those things I said before. So I overcame that part of the challenge too.
Now I’ve finished all the parts of my challenge and I’m a Bat Mitzvah. Getting through it will probably help me later on, although I wasn’t happy while I was in the middle of it. One lesson was that it helps to take a big challenge and split it into smaller parts. Then it doesn’t seem as big. Another thing is to give yourself plenty of time to finish each part because other stuff will come up in the middle. Finally, never be afraid to ask for help. There are many people that will help if you ask.
I would like to thank Rabbi Saxe for helping me write the blurbs in your pullout and Rabbi Schwartzman for helping me write my speech, and all the rest of the clergy for helping me get through this. Thank you to my friends and family for always reminding me everything was okay and that it was going to turn out fine. Thank you to my parents for continuously telling me to study ... I know I would not be ready for this if you weren’t there. A very special thanks to Melissa Hill-Jones, my tutor, for getting me back on track and never getting fed up with me when I didn’t study. And thank you to all of you for coming. I hope the lessons I learned will help you with your challenges. Shabbat shalom!
Editing: sharpening, cropping, darkening the background, blurring out the rabbi a bit more than in the original to enhance the focus on my daughter, correcting the exposure, and correcting the color. |
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