Bar/Bat Mitzvah

For many years, there have been those who have raised the issue of the role of the bar/bat mitzvah in the American synagogue; yet it continues to be an abiding question of what the synagogue should be. It is so central that it must be addressed. For too many synagogues, it is the tail wagging the dog. It is time to find ways to put the bar/bat mitzvah back in a healthy and appropriate context - for the benefit of synagogues, the families, and the Jewish people.

Even after all these years, if one visits many synagogues, one comes away feeling that the real reason for a Shabbat service is the bar/bat mitzvah. Others [non-guest daveners] who may be there seem incidental. The dominance of the bar/bat mitzvah surely must limit a synagogue's flexibility in thinking through the Shabbat experience to say nothing of the disenfranchisement of the regular members. And while these rites of passage can be beautifully done, it does not seem the ideal way to build community.

The bar/bat mitzvah is still perceived as graduation from Jewish education for too many. There must be a way to transform that graduation into a commencement - the beginning of adult learning, not the end of marginal Jewish education. There are some intriguing initiatives to address this: One impressive example is the B'nai Tzedek program, conceived by Harold Grinspoon, which provides a small philanthropic endowment for B'nai mitzvah - to learn that with maturity comes responsibility and the honor of giving. This program now exists in 20-30 communities throughout the USA, with very positive results. Another program, about which I have just learned, is in connection with MAZON. I am quite sure that there are other initiatives with equal promise.

There must be concomitant community wide reshuffling of priorities for Jewish education subsidies. If adolescence is the time when young people are most influenced by peers and are learning to make social choices which may last into adulthood, why are we not providing major incentives to engage that population? It is clear that we have it backwards - at the time when the major influence is the home, we send them to supplementary or day school; at the time when they are influenced by peers, we let them opt out.

The bar/bat mitzvah must, therefore, be reconfigured to play a different role in the life of the family, the life of the synagogue, and the life of the individual. Any real change will require a major national commitment so that many synagogues opt in. Therefore, while I am not typically a proponent of national conferences to solve problems, in this case I feel that a trans-denominational conference committed to the question of rethinking the bar/bat mitzvah experience may be the only way that individual synagogues can be empowered in their commitment to explore changes in their own practices.