B'nai Mitzvah Program
We are delighted that you are joining us to celebrate one of our young people becoming Bat Mitzvah or Bar Mitzvah. But what does that mean exactly?
When a young person in the Jewish family turns 13, we begin to regard them differently. They are not considered a fully fledged adult – we don’t kick them out of the house to fend for themselves – but we do consider them more capable of taking responsibility for their own actions, as well as taking responsibility for the needs of their community.
Every culture has a rite of passage for its youth in this transitional period of their lives, and those rites reflect the values of their culture. Some cultures value bravery, beauty, and poise. Some cultures prize self-reliance and resilience to physical hardship. Their rites of passage demonstrate a child’s readiness to display these attributes.
The celebration that you are going to join us for includes one of our children convening us all in prayer, demonstrating mastery of learning, and teaching us their fresh insights into a 4,000-year-old tradition of stories, study, and sacred text. This demonstrates the Jewish values of learning, teaching, leadership, and taking responsibility for not only the physical but also spiritual well-being of their community.
Our custom is to have this celebration as part of our usually weekly Shabbat (Sabbath) services, rather than make it a separate ceremony, to demonstrate that while we celebrate the child, we’re also celebrating this milestone as a community, a community that has helped the child get to this moment, and will benefit from the child’s maturing.
Like our Shabbat services, we are accustomed to celebrating while physically gathered together. In this season, however, we are recognizing that part of maturity and community responsibility is to safeguard the health and well-being of each other. That’s why this celebration is taking place online, where we can maximize community involvement while maintaining healthy physical distance. Nevertheless, our children are performing all the rites and ceremonies that the Jewish tradition regards as essential to this happy occasion.
Thank you again for joining us to celebrate one of our children beginning the road to adulthood, one of our students become one of our teachers. Mazal tov!
