Bar Mitzvah (Hebrew: בר מצוה) and Bat Mitzvah (Hebrew: בת מצוה) are Jewish coming of age rituals. According to Jewish law, when Jewish boys reach 13, they become responsible for their actions and become a Bar Mitzvah (plural: B'nai Mitzvah). The age for girls is 12. In addition to being considered responsible for their actions from a religious perspective, B'nai mitzvah may be counted towards a minyan (prayer quorum) and may lead prayer and other religious services in the family and the community. The age of B'nai Mitzvah was selected because it roughly coincides with physical puberty.[1] Prior to a child reaching Bar or Bat Mitzvah, the child's parents hold the responsibility for the child's actions. After this age, children bear their own responsibility for Jewish ritual law, tradition, and ethics and are able to participate in all areas of Jewish community life.[2]
Contents |
Whoever becomes Bar or Bat Mitzvah has the responsibilities of an adult Jew under Jewish law. These include
Below the age of Bar Mitzvah, children are considered exempt from Jewish law, although they must undertake mitzvahs gradually, under the parent's tutelage, as training and preparation for their coming of age. This can create interesting situations; for example, if a child under the age of Bar Mitzvah ties tzitzits onto his own tallit, they may have to be retied after the Bar Mitzvah.[3]
In many congregations, the years leading up to a Bar or Bat Mitzvah celebration are spent preparing for the event. Many congregations require youngsters to attend a minimum number of Shabbat prayer services at the synagogue, to attend Hebrew School, take on a charity or community service project, and to maintain membership in good standing with the synagogue. In addition to study and preparation offered through the synagogue and Hebrew schools, a cottage industry of B'nai Mitzvah tutors has sprung up, offering services including teaching Hebrew, Torah cantillation, basic Jewish concepts, and coordinating community service projects. Recently various online offerings have also become available.
The widespread practice is that on the first Sabbath of his fourteenth year, a boy is called up to read from the weekly portion of the Law (five books of Moses), either as one of the first seven men or as the last, in which case he will read the closing verses and the Haftarah (selections from the books of the Prophets); and if he be unable to read, to recite at least the benediction before and after the reading.[4] (Calling someone up to say the Torah blessings during a service is called an Aliyah, from the Hebrew: עֲלִיָּה, from the verb la'alot, לעלות, meaning, "to rise, to ascend; to go up"). He may also give a d'var Torah (a discussion of some Torah issue, such as a discussion of that week's Torah portion) and/or lead part or all of the prayer services.
In non-orthodox circles, the above applies to a girl at the time of her Bat Mitzvah as well. In Orthodox congregations, a Bat Mitzvah ceremony will not include the Bat Mitzvah girl leading religious services, as women are ineligible to lead communal religious services in the Orthodox tradition. Some progressive Orthodox congregations do allow women, including Bat Mitzvah girls, to read Torah or lead prayers at women-only prayer groups. Precisely what the Bar/Bat Mitzvah should lead during the service varies in Judaism's different denominations and from one congregation to another and is not fixed by Jewish law.
In Orthodox circles, the occasion is sometimes celebrated during a weekday service that includes reading from the Torah, such as a Monday or Thursday morning service, in which case the Bar Mitzvah will also lay tefillin for the first time publicly.
Some communities or families may delay the celebration for reasons such as availability of a Shabbat during which no other celebration has been scheduled, or due to the desire to permit family to travel to the event. However, this does not delay the onset of rights and responsibilities of being a Jewish adult which comes about strictly by virtue of age.
In current practice, boys who belong to branches of Judaism that regularly lay tefillin do not start laying them until they are close to becoming a Bar Mitzvah. The most widespread custom in those branches involves starting to wear tefillin about 30 days before the 13th birthday, although others commence about three months in advance, and there is also a custom (prevalent among chasidim) for tefillin to be worn for the first time on the 13th birthday. For this reason a strong correlation exists between the Bar Mitzvah ceremony and the commandment of tefillin.
The event is celebrated by joyous festivity, the Bar Mitzvah boy delivering on this occasion a learned discourse or oration at the table before the invited guests, who offer him presents, while the rabbi or teacher gives him his blessing, accompanying it at times with an address.[4]
B'nai Mitzvah festivities typically include a celebratory meal with family, friends, and members of the community. Others may celebrate in different ways such as taking the bar mitzvah on a special trip or organizing some special event in the celebrant's honor. In many communities, the celebrant is given a certificate.
Bar and Bat Mitzvah parties in affluent postwar America have become lavish affairs, not infrequently black-tie Saturday night affairs at posh hotels and country clubs with hundreds of guests, that rival weddings in their glitz and glamor.[5] [6][7]
An entire industry has sprung up around these elaborate b'nei mitzvot.[8] This promotional video (decidedly not done tongue-in-cheek) shows the 12 hour set-up required for what the promoter calls an "over the top NBA themed bar mitzvah"
The trend has been mocked by popular culture, most notably in the recent movie Keeping Up With The Steins.
Even noted Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has weighed in on this trend, recalling that over-the-top bar mitzvah parties were already quite common when he was growing up in Miami back in the 1970s. [9]
Today most non-Orthodox Jews celebrate a girl's Bat Mitzvah in the same way as a boy's Bar Mitzvah. All Reform and Reconstructionist, and most[10] Conservative synagogues have egalitarian participation, in which women read from the Torah and lead services.
The majority of Orthodox Jews reject the idea that a woman can publicly read from the Torah or lead prayer services whenever there is a minyan (quorum of 10 males) available to do so. However, the public celebration of a girl becoming Bat Mitzvah in other ways has made strong inroads into Modern Orthodox Judaism and also into some elements of Haredi Judaism. In these congregations, women do not read from the Torah or lead prayer services, but they occasionally lecture on a Jewish topic to mark their coming of age, learn a book of Tanakh, recite verses from the Book of Esther or the Book of Psalms, or say prayers from the siddur. In some modern Orthodox circles, Bat Mitzvah girls will read from the Torah and lead prayer services in a women's tefillah. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, a prominent Orthodox posek, has ruled that Bat Mitzvah celebrations are allowable and should not be construed as imitating non-Jewish customs; however, they do not have the status of seudat mitzvah.[11] Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef[12] holds that it is a seudat mitzvah.
There were occasional attempts to recognize a girl's coming of age in eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, the former in Warsaw (1843) and the latter in Lemberg (1902). The occasion was marked by a party without any ritual in the synagogue.[13]
According to the archivist at the Great Synagogue in Rome, the custom of a young woman being called up in synagogue before the entire community dates back to the early years of the Roman Jewish community approximately 2,300 years ago. The community recognized her as "being of age" and acknowledged her in a public fashion. This would support more modern documents that record an Orthodox Jewish Italian rite for becoming Bat Mitzvah (which involved an "entrance into the minyan" ceremony, in which boys of thirteen and girls of twelve recited a blessing) since the mid-19thcentury.[14] There were also Bat Mitzvahs held in the 19th century in Iraq.[15] All this may have influenced the American rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, who held the first public celebration of a Bat Mitzvah in America, for his daughter Judith, on March 18, 1922, at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism (his synagogue) in New York City.[16][17] Judith recited the preliminary blessing, read a portion of that week's Torah portion in Hebrew and English, and then intoned the closing blessing.[16]Kaplan, an Orthodox rabbi who joined Conservative Judaism and then became the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, influenced Jews from all branches of non-Orthodox Judaism, through his position at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. At the time, most Orthodox rabbis strongly rejected the idea of a Bat Mitzvah ceremony.
Instead of reading from the Torah, some Humanist Jews prefer a research paper on a topic in Jewish history to mark their coming of age.[18][19][20] Secular Jewish Sunday schools and communities—including those affiliated with the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations and the Arbeiter Ring (Workmen's Circle)—encourage the youngsters to select any topic that interests them and relates to the Jewish part of their identities. After extensive, guided research and profound thought, the young people present their findings in any format they may select.
The kibbutz movement in Israel also encouraged the celebration of the Bar Mitzvah. All those coming to age in the community for that year would take upon themselves a project and do some research in a topic of Jewish or Zionist interest. Today many kibbutz children are opting for a more traditional barmitzvah celebration.
Among some Jews, a man who has reached the age of 83 will customarily celebrate a second bar mitzvah, under the logic that in the Torah it says that a "normal" lifespan is 70 years, so that an 83-year-old can be considered 13 in a second lifetime. This practice has become increasingly common.[21]
As the ceremony became accepted for females as well as males, many women chose to celebrate the ceremony even though they were much older, as a way of formalizing and celebrating their place in the adult Jewish community.[22]
Bar or Bat Mitzvah celebrations have become an occasion to give the celebrant a commemorative gift. Traditionally, common gifts include books with religious or educational value, religious items, writing implements, savings bonds (to be used for the child's college education), gift certificates, or money.[23] Gifts of cash have become commonplace in recent times. As with charity and all other gifts, it has become common to give in multiples of 18, since the gematria, or numerical equivalent of the Hebrew word for "life", ("chai"), is the number 18. Monetary gifts in multiples of 18 are considered to be particularly auspicious and have become very common for Bar/Bat Mitzvahs. Many Bar/Bat Mitzvah also receive their first tallit (a Jewish prayer shawl) from their parents to be used for the occasion and tefillin where this is appropriate. Jewellery is a common gift for girls at a Bat Mitzvah celebration. Another meaningful gift for the Bat Mitzvah girl are Shabbat candlesticks because it is the duty and honour of the woman to light the candles.
The modern method of celebrating becoming a Bar Mitzvah did not exist in the time of the Bible, Mishnah or Talmud. Passages in the books of Exodus and Numbers note the age of majority for army service as twenty.[24] The term "Bar Mitzvah" appears first in the Talmud, the codification of the Jewish oral Torah compiled in the early first millennium of the common era, to connote "an [agent] who is subject to scriptural commands,"[25] and the age of thirteen is also mentioned in the Mishnah as the time one is obligated to observe the Torah's commandments: "At five years old a person should study the Scriptures, at ten years for the Mishnah, at 13 for the commandments . . ."[26][27] The Talmud gives 13 as the age at which a boy's vows are legally binding, and states that this is a result of his being a "man," as required in Numbers 6:2.[28] The term "Bar Mitzvah", in the sense it is now used, cannot be clearly traced earlier than the 14th century, the older rabbinical term being "gadol" (adult) or "bar 'onshin" (legally responsible for own misdoings).[4] Many sources indicate that the ceremonial observation of a Bar Mitzvah developed in the Middle Ages,[27][29] however, there are extensive earlier references to thirteen as the age of majority with respect to following the commandments of the Torah, as well as Talmudic references to observing this rite of passage with a religious ceremony, including:
Oppenheimer, Mark. Thirteen and a Day: The Bar and Bat Mitzvah across America. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||