Alef: The NEXT Conversation

Masada or Bust

by Emily Kapit

Somewhere in the hazy creases of my memory, I’ve been able to dredge up a long-forgotten moment in time. I am six or so, a rail-thin girl with chicken legs and wildly frizzy curls, wearing the kind of dress that my Christian friends donned only on Easter. I am standing on the bimah, having just finished watching my middle brother find his way into Jewish manhood; the only thing standing between the interminable service and a celebratory party (with a magician!) is me and my task for the morning: sing the chamotzi, tear off a piece of bread and eat it.

For a quick second, my mind’s eye shoots back to mornings driving with my mother as she played the tape that taught me the short blessing. I knew the words but was scared people would reel from my horrific singing voice (at such a young age, I was likely not using words like, “reel” and “horrific” but the sentiment was there). Standing on the bimah, I feel slightly nervous looking at the sea of eyes staring back at me, waiting for me to say something, anything.

Finally, I break into song, focusing on my family rather than that day’s temple congregants. Upon the a-men, I pull off a chunk of challah and shove it into my mouth, a titter of laughter rippling through the audience. I’m fairly sure they were laughing at the small child trying to swallow a giant chunk of bread rather than her unfortunate singing voice, but we’ll never know.

This particular memory–as well as a few others from my two other brothers’ bar mitzvahs–floated through my mind as we rode the funicular up to the top of Masada on a cool December morning when I was thirteen. Wearing white–and trying very hard not to get it dirty, what with being surrounded by dust–I cut off the memory reel in my head and mentally reviewed the Torah portion for my service. My Bat Mitzvah service was set to start in an hour, soon after we finished touring Masada and learning the history.

All three of my elder brothers had the normal American Bar Mitzvahs: service in the morning, followed by a quick Kiddush celebration before moving on to the larger celebration. As I began to near the Bat Mitzvah age, expecting the planning for yet another family celebration to begin, all religious talks around the dinner table centered, instead, on the temple rabbi and how the temple board thought it was time to find someone else. I do not remember who had the original idea but somehow it was floated at dinner one evening: Since the Rabbi who Bar Mitzvahed the boys is leaving–and it’s relatively quiet over there now–why not go to Israel for Emily’s Bat Mitzvah?

Trips were researched, plans made and tickets purchased. Before I knew it, we were boarding an El Al flight for Tel Aviv with a packed itinerary, including a Bat Mitzvah on top of Masada.

And so there I was, miraculously still immaculately white, standing with my family, tour guide, and some additional tourists. Though our immediate surroundings looked pretty much exactly like every other nook and cranny on top of Masada, both the tour guide and rabbi assured us that this very room was Masada’s place of service, the oldest synagogue ruins in the world.

As those words hung in the air and we pondered them for a second, I shot a half-smirk toward the youngest of my three brothers. As brothers are seemingly meant to do, he had been torturing me for months that my Bat Mitzvah was not nearly as meaningful as his, since it was not like his or anyone else’s to which he’d been.

The longer I stood there, though, waiting to start my own service, the more focused I was on listening to the story of what occurred on top of Masada: the impassioned battles against ruthless enemies bent on seeing the Jews’ ultimate demise. In my head, I countered this with what little I knew about the Spanish Inquisition as well as my working knowledge of the Holocaust.

“How amazing is it,” I wondered, “that any Jew is still around to go reach this milestone? We’ve been targeted for generations!”

I finally had my chance to go through the ceremony and, yet again, my biggest fear was not forgetting the words but actually scaring people off the mountain with my horrible chanting. Luckily, some IDF planes chose the right moment to jet across the sky, drowning out my cat-like warbles.

In the days and years that followed, though, I continued to reflect on my Masada moment: Not the actual service and not even the IDF planes soaring overhead against a crisp blue sky; rather, the instant I realized how lucky I was to have a Bat Mitzvah, in Israel or anywhere else. What made my Bat Mitzvah on top of Masada as real as my brothers’ in our small temple in North Carolina, as real as my friends’ services in gigantic synagogues in Manhattan, is that it happened at all. The preparations, big and small, are worth it so long as Jews continue having the opportunity to reach the bimah as Bar and Bat Mitzvahs.

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

Photo by Singinginjerusalem, licensed under Creative Commons.

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