Alef: The NEXT Conversation

Right of Passage

by Ari Averbach

First, some vocab. Bar Mitzvah for a boy. Bat Mitzvah for a girl. Bnai Mitzvah is plural. Translation is child (or children) of the commandment. And you become one, you don’t have one. Both are accepted, the former is more correct.

My Bar Mitzvah was traditional. When I say traditional, I mean it in the mid-90s, Los Angeles, big-budget sort of way. The date was picked when I was ten. Invitations went out six weeks in advance, once the room, photographer, videographer, caterer, colors, theme, centerpieces, and party favors were all decided. Three hundred people came. Thursday morning service. Friday night service and dinner. Big service on Saturday morning with Rabbi Schulweis officiating a 200-minute Torah and prayer extravaganza. Change of costumes, set up of venue, and the party started that night with dancing, eating, and drinking. It was beautiful and warm. More importantly, it was an event with an identity crisis: was this a party for a 13-year-old boy who had just read Torah or a gala fundraiser for a politician?

I thought that was how bnai mitzvah were. Tens of thousands of dollars spent on inflatable shoes, glow in the dark necklaces, and video montages of the past 13 years with everyone you ever knew eating rubbery chicken and salty potatoes, sipping on Shirley Temples and doing the “Time Warp” until midnight. Sometimes we would hear a story of two people making out (or worse!) under a table, trying to look past the pre-teen acne, untamable hair, and peach-fuzz-transitional mustaches.

When I led a Taglit trip this past December, it leaked out that Leah never became a Bat Mitzvah. Nor had Kyla. Nor Evan (Bar Mitzvah for him; remember the lesson I gave at the beginning). During the trip, seven people approached us asking for this honor. I talked with my co-leader, Allison, and our amazing tour guide, Erez, to try to figure out how to approach this. We had all heard that other trips officiated the bnai mitzvah of participants, but we did not have guidelines for how to do it. So, we made a decision.

I spent the night transliterating and translating that week’s Torah portion. Allison went to each of the soon-to-be bnai and wrote down their Hebrew names, or helped them think of one. Leah was still Leah. Rose became Shoshana (Hebrew for Rose). We gave them each a part to learn.

The next morning, atop Masada right after sunrise, we gathered in the ancient temple and performed the ceremony. Each came up when called by her or his Hebrew name, put on my tallit, read their part in Hebrew and English, and told us about how they got their name. One of our soldiers and one of the American participants sang the priestly blessings while each of the other soldiers placed their hands atop the new bnai mitzvah’s heads, as a parent or rabbi would do to a bnai mitzvah. Everyone else threw candy and we had a spontaneous hora right there on top of the old ruins, like they would have done two thousand years ago. Singing, dancing circles, lifting the honored. In some official way, these amazing people took a great leap in their faith to become children of the covenant with God. It was their choice, not an expected right of passage used as an excuse to throw a party.

As we were climbing down the Snake Path, everyone beaming with pride and sweating with fury, it dawned on me. This was a real traditional Bnai Mitzvah. With or without the Village People singing ‘YMCA‘.

Photo provided by Ari Averbach.

Read more posts from Issue #13: Bar Mitzvah Season.

Tags: birthright israel trip, bnai mitzvah, Israel, jew, jewish, masada

Posted by Emily.Comisar@birthrightisraelnext.org, Monday, May 17th, 2010, 5:05 pm, Bar Mitzvah Season.