Bat Mitzvah Debate Follow-Up

Drumroll . . . we made the decision regarding when we should celebrate Bella's bat mitzvah.

It was fascinating discussing this question with so many deeply engaged, thinking people: rabbis, educators, and parents. Some rabbis prefer bat mitzvah at 13 because it keeps girls in Hebrew school another year. Several people I consider "professional" Conservative Jews told me they had never really pondered the question. One clergy member told me that in her congregation, bat mitzvahs are usually at 13, although 12-year-old girls are counted in the minyan. "We are consistently inconsistent!" she said.

The contemporary feminist arguments for bat mitzvah at 13 are strong. As my rabbi, Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky, added to a Facebook discussion:

"one has to ask why rabbinic tradition assigned girls maturity to 12. I think it is not a modern assessment of intellectual or emotional maturity - though these may be real - but a less nuanced report about menarche. In other words: It was time to get busy! I would prefer that such considerations vanish from contemporary ritual decisions."

On the other hand, Professor of Rabbinics Rabbi Gail Labovitz said this, also on Facebook:

"I lean towards 12, though I get that it does not seem egalitarian, and I am very much, generally, committed to egalitarianism. The age [of bar/ bat mitzvah] does indeed have a link to the onset of puberty, but this is true for both boys and girls - indeed, well into the rabbinic period one can find contesting voices in rabbinic lit. as to whether bar and bat mitzvah should be decided by a universal age limit, or by demonstrating actual physical signs of puberty. At the same time, the rabbis did imagine that a girl "became" bat mitzvah at 12 just like a boy becomes "bar mitzvah" at 13 . . . . So in our day, if we are expanding the realm of mitzvot that we think women should be responsible for . . . . then those responsibilities kick in at 12 - and girls who don't fulfill them until a year later might be thought of as sinning..."

Compellingly, several people told me that bat mitzvah at 12 is a feminist ritual, because it celebrates girls' coming of age in a different way to how boys' maturity is celebrated; it breaks the pattern of using the masculine as the standard.

Then there are the practical issues. One rabbi/parent told me that her daughter was unhappy with her Hebrew school class, so holding her bat mitzvah at 12 was a way to "graduate" and move on to Prozdor (Hebrew school for high schoolers, in NYC). She was not the only rabbi who told me that they based their decision of when to hold their own daughters' bat mitzvah ceremonies primarily on the particular circumstances and needs of that child.

Bella goes to a Conservative day school where the practice is for girls to celebrate an in-school bat mitzvah at 12. Bella is eager to get the party started, so to speak, and wants to do what her friends will do. The bat mitzvah is a celebration of a change in status for the child, and as such, it makes sense to have the in-school bat mitzvah at the same time as the synagogue celebration.

In addition, I'm all for celebrating milestones at once. In general, I try to make the kids' birthday celebrations as close to their birthdays as possible--no month-long birthdays for me, if you know what I'm sayin'.

Taking all of the above into consideration, and needing to make a practical decision, we decided to hold Bella's bat mitzvah soon after her 12th birthday. In March 2015, we will be the proud parents of a bat mitzvah girl. Mazel Tov!

And now I officially feel old.

Bat Mitzvah at 12 or 13? A Jewish Feminist Question

This January, my oldest daughter will turn 11. Do you know what this means? It does not mean, perhaps to her dismay, that she soon will be whisked away to wizarding school. It means that we are woefully late picking a date for Bella's bat mitzvah.

But picking that date is proving to be a struggle. Should it be when she's 12 or 13?

In 1988, I had my bat mitzvah at age 13, on a Friday evening in my family's non-egalitarian Conservative synagogue. I was allowed to lead the Kabbalat Shabbat service, but not Ma'ariv. I read from Shir HaShirim, a beautiful idea that my father had to allow me to learn trop and chant from the Tanach, since I was not allowed to read the Torah or Haftorah. My bat mitzvah was beautiful, but it was not equal in scale or importance to my brothers' coming-of-age celebrations; on their bar mitzvahs, they each led the tefilot, and read the complete Torah portion and Haftorah before the entire congregation on Shabbat morning.

As I wrote recently in a piece for the New Israel Fund, I grew up with mixed messages; I was encouraged to count and succeed equally to boys in every way, except in the Jewish ritual realm.

As with so much related to boy-rearing compared to girl-rearing, bar mitzvahs are comparatively simple. Sometime after the boy's 13th Hebrew birthday he has an aliyah to the Torah (says the blessings before the torah reading), maybe says a few words about the Torah portion and/or his tzedakah project, and bam, done. In fact, even if he never has an official bar mitzvah ceremony, as soon as he reaches his 13th birthday, he is automatically "bar mitzvah'ed". Being bar mitzvah means that the boy has reached the age of majority, and is therefore obligated to follow the commandments incumbent upon Jewish men.

Perhaps because it's a quite recent addition to Jewish ritual, the bat mitzvah ceremony is less straightforward. For generations, women were all but barred from participating in public religious life. There were no bat mitzvahs, and girls' coming-of-age was not celebrated publicly. The modern bat mitzvah, in which girls are called to the Torah and lead the services just like boys do, is a new(ish) event born of a feminist drive to include women in Jewish communal ritual. It would seem natural to hold it at 13, the traditional age of majority.

image copyright Bitsela, used courtesy of free-bitsela.com

But some say a bat mitzvah should be at age 12 because the Talmud (Jewish law texts written between the 2nd and 5th centuries) says that is when girls are considered mature--and therefore obligated to fast on Yom Kippur. Presumably, the earlier age of maturity--and obligation to mitzvot--for girls is related to when most began menstruating (and might also be marriageable). But the obligations incumbent on women in the Talmud are very different from those incumbent on men. Women are not, for instance, bound to any time-sensitive mitzvot, such as prayer, which is also why historically (and still today in the Orthodox world) women could not count in a minyan or lead a prayer service.

I am far from a Talmud scholar, but it seems to me that the Talmudic source has little to do with the modern concept of bat mitzvah, in which girls are welcomed into the full range of mitzvot traditionally incumbent on men, including daily prayer. And yet, there's a phenomenon that has taken hold in Conservative Jewish communities of late, at least in my area, to celebrate b'not mitzvah at age 12. Many of these impressive girls take on the full commitment of Jewish ritual life-- including donning tallit and tefillin daily--starting a year earlier than boys do.

 I do not dispute that girls often mature faster than their male counterparts--they may indeed be "ready" for the milestone, have the knowledge, poise, etc.--but to me that is beside the point. Is this practice egalitarian? Why, after working so hard to gain ritual and spiritual equality, would we (egalitarian/ feminist Jews) want to separate the genders by age in the onset of their commitment to the mitzvot? And why should girls be obligated to cut their childhoods short by a year?

I am genuinely interested in your responses, and welcome your comments, as well as suggestions for further reading.

So Many Holidays, So Little Time

It's the holiday season, for some of us. Jingle bells for the Jews.

A friend who works for a Jewish institution posted on Facebook that it's always this time of year when she hears a lot of, "Why are your offices closed? I never heard of this holiday you speak of." Thank you, Miryam, for this: http://www.isitajewishholidaytoday.com/

Yes! I feel sheepish, at times, having to explain that there's "yet another holiday" this week, and that once again my children will be home from school. It's a lot of celebrating, all squished together into a short period of time. I remember trying to explain to friends in high school, or at the office, why I was missing so much school/ work this time of year: "it's another Jewish holiday...don't ask." You could tell they weren't sure whether to believe you. It doesn't really seem plausible, does it?

And right after the summer! How in the world can you get back into your family's routines when your preschooler has only one morning of school a week for the first three?

Of course, for those who observe, it doesn't matter when the holidays fall; whenever they arrive, we greet them with open arms. We do our best to cook and prepare and be merry. We make the brisket, twice (once for RH, and once for Sukkot)! (OK, let's be honest "we" don't make the brisket; Josh does. I ordered it, though. That counts for something.) We drop everything and run to Savta and Saba's house, where, if we're lucky, we fight for a bed with siblings and cousins. At least this year it was warm; no need for down coats in the sukkah.

Sukkot is an important holiday for our clan. My siblings and I attend our own shuls in our own towns for the high holidays, but every year, the extended family gathers for this strangest of holidays--the one where we shake the imported branches and eat in a hut. (How do you explain this one to the neighbors?) It's really the crunchiest of Jewish holidays. We eat outside! Under the stars! It's like camping. With lots of good food.

First cousins

The saddest time for us was when we were in London, and couldn't make it home for Sukkot. But, on the other hand, it was exciting because we had a small garden, and our very first (and very tiny) sukkah.

The pop-up sukkah

Yes, it's all a bit odd, but not strange at all, if it's what you've always done. I feel grateful to have Sukkot in my life, and in my kids' life, because it's so wacky and fun and specific to Judaism. There's nothing like it anywhere else.

It's not over yet, this holiday season. Oh, no! We've got Shmini Atzeret (I know! Are you excited?) and Simchat Torah, a perennial childhood favorite. We will dance, we will sing, we will rejoice, and then we will say goodbye to this holiday marathon for another year. Phew. I'm exhausted.

!חג שמח