Again, with the Bnei Mitzvah...

posted by Rabbi Jonathan Roos

Winds of change are blowing through the bar and bat mitzvah landscape. A few months ago, the URJ launched a program called “The B'nai Mitzvah Revolution.” A few days ago, Kveller posted an article titled, “Ban the Bar Mitzah.” Despite its title, the writer ultimately concludes (spoiler alert), “I don’t think we should ban the bnei mitzvah.” The writer proposes a “family bnei mitzvah” designed to develop home based Jewish observance and encourage parents to be the primary teachers and exemplars. Good ideas. Good article. I hope you'll read it and react.

The Kveller article offers four points of critique:

1. Bnei Mitzvah don’t accomplish much.
2. They aren’t part of Jewish continuity, but evolution.
3. Your money is a synagogue welfare check.
4. It makes adults look like hypocrites.

They are all valid and Sinai’s clergy, senior staff and members have been working on issues related to all four. It’s good to have bloggers like this who can succinctly state the points and foster a viral discussion on the issue. The blogger, however, could use more real experience and relies mainly on things he or she has heard from academic presenters at conferences or seen in print.  It’s been over ten years since my ordination and I’ve served full time in three congregations in three different states. I’ve worked with hundreds of bnai mitzvah families. The bar/bat mitzvah needs to evolve but it is not so broken as you might think from the blog title.

I’ll offer four quick responses:

1. They accomplish much more than the blogger thinks. Many comments on Kveller have already pointed this out: the ceremony itself is only a small piece of the larger puzzle.  The months (and even years) of relationships built through the training, planning and lead-up to bar/bat mitzvah is quite an accomplishment in many cases. The students and parents also take a tremendous amount of pride in their accomplishment after the fact (and they use that term, “accomplishment”). I know this from families speaking years after their children’s bnei mitzvah.
2. They actually ARE part of Jewish continuity. They may not be required elements of Jewish tradition but the bar/bat mitzvah does help solidify a family’s sense of Jewish continuity. You need to talk with grandparents and great-grandparents of bnei mitzvah students to understand that but they will tell you as much. This is also evident in the feelings and statements of adults who did not “have a bar/bat mitzvah” as a child. They often feel inadequately Jewish or lacking something important.
3. The welfare check analogy is a poorly chosen metaphor (as is the crack dealer one he/she uses). For starters, I doubt the rabbinic student believes that actual welfare “checks” supporting the poor are such a terrible thing (at least I hope not). The whole point is based on the assumption that poor people and synagogues are bad and unworthy of financial support from the larger community. Synagogues, like schools, hospitals, governments, businesses, and rabbinic students, can always be better and must strive to meet the needs of the Jewish community today. But starting from the presumption that synagogues do not merit financial and other support from their members doesn’t do anything constructive for anyone – unless you really do believe that Jews and the world in general would be better off without synagogues at all.
4. “Hypocrites” is an empty slur that should never be the basis of educational or developmental decisions. Education always requires students to learn material that their parents don’t use or know. We require our children to study geometry even when we ourselves can not complete the proofs and constructions on their tests. We require them to read books we disliked or never read ourselves. We require them to take biology, chemistry, or physics even after they have told us that they have no interest in a future career that needs such sciences. Many will tell their teens not to text or talk while driving even while the parents do it themselves. And if you haven’t reached the joys of parenting teens, you’ve probably told your small child to eat everything on their plate even though you yourself wouldn’t force down a meal you find distasteful or after you feel full. Only requiring of students those things that their parents regularly perform and understand is a formula for limitation and a bad pedagogical plan.

All that said, bar/bat mitzvah needs to evolve. The first thing we should acknowledge is that one size does not fit all. This, perhaps, is where synagogues and educators should start. The synagogue tendency toward rules and standardized requirements and services needs to change. It takes more work and it opens the door to inconsistency and loss of clergy control over the services and training, but our students and their families are interested in accomplishing something through bar/bat mitzvah. That accomplishment happens best when it fits them best.