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Posts Tagged ‘Jewish legacy’
Deep Jewish Education for All, Talmud
November 19th, 2010
By ISABEL KERSHNER, Jerusalem Journal, Published: November 18, 2010
In the 1960s, when a young Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz embarked on the mammoth task of translating the ancient Jewish texts of the Talmud into modern Hebrew and, even more daringly, providing his own commentary alongside those of the classical sages, the state of Israel was still in its teens, there were no home computers, and man had not yet landed on the moon.
The monumental work took 45 years. But this month in his hometown, Jerusalem, Rabbi Steinsaltz, now 73, marked the end of the endeavor, as the last of the 45 volumes of his edition of the Babylonian Talmud, originally completed 1,500 years ago, rolled off the press.
“When I began it I did not think it would be so difficult or so long,” the rabbi said in a meandering interview that went late into the night at his Steinsaltz Center for religious studies in the city’s historic Nahlaot neighborhood. “I thought it would take maybe half the time.”
First, he said, there was the arrogance of youth, then financial and political obstacles, several spells in the hospital and the disruptive effect of a few wars.
Rabbi Steinsaltz, frail after a recent illness, sealed his achievement on Nov. 7 with a modest closing ceremony at City Hall here and a live video linkup connecting 360 Jewish communities across 48 countries on a global day of Jewish learning in the spirit of the Talmud.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, sent greetings by video and, recalling his private Talmud sessions with the rabbi in the past, said they were among the most rewarding intellectual experiences of his life.
The original Talmud, written in a mixture of old Hebrew and Aramaic, is all about learning. The act of learning, according to the rabbi, is the “central pillar” or “backbone” of Judaism — what connects Jews with the Almighty above, with their roots below and with one another.
“This book is essential for our existence,” Rabbi Steinsaltz said.
The Talmud, a compilation and analysis of oral Jewish law and ethics governing everything from marital relations to agriculture, is written as a flowing rabbinic discourse. Though the terms are archaic, many say the Talmud contains founding principles that can still be applied today. But its condensed and obscure style made it largely incomprehensible to all but serious scholars.
By adding vowel markings and punctuation to the ancient text, a modern Hebrew translation that fills in gaps, and contemporary interpretations, the Steinsaltz edition aims to make the Talmud accessible to everyone.
Rabbi Steinsaltz, a diminutive man with straggly hair and an unruly white beard tinged yellow after decades of smoking a pipe, is widely considered one of the most brilliant Jewish scholars of his age.
He was born into what he described as a “not especially religious home”; his father was a Zionist socialist who volunteered in the international brigades in Spain. The rabbi says his religious belief developed gradually in his teens.
“By nature I am a skeptical person, and people with a lot of skepticism start to question atheism,” he said.
His father sent him to a Talmud tutor at the age of 10 so that he would not grow up an “ignoramus.” Later, in college, he specialized in mathematics and physics. As a result, the rabbi has an unusual ability to move easily between different worlds — secular and sacred, scientific and spiritual, earthly and divine.
Though born sickly, Rabbi Steinsaltz has long compensated for the limitations of the human condition with intellectual and metaphysical flights. Among his most popular works is “The Thirteen Petalled Rose,” a journey into Jewish mysticism that he described as “a book for the soul.”
Asking questions, he said, is both the secret of science and the essence of the Talmud, the dialectic forming the character of the Jewish people.
He denied that his translation detracted from the book’s inner complexity and mystique. “I am not simplifying the Talmud; I am cutting some of the technical difficulties,” he said. “I am paving roads, opening doors. Not more.”
Just finding the right format for the millions of words of the Talmud was a challenge. Each page consists of a central block of the original text bordered by the classical commentary, alongside the translation, new analysis and notes, each part distinguished from the others by different typefaces and fonts.
Rabbi Steinsaltz began the task alone, but later found people “willing to lend a hand.” It became easier with computers — not least, he said, because his handwriting is so atrocious that he himself finds it hard to read.
Some in the traditional establishment were suspicious, even hostile at first. The rabbi’s level of religiosity was in doubt, and there was a reluctance to open up locked treasures.
Since he started work on it, three million volumes of the Steinsaltz edition are said to have been sold, and it has been partly translated into several other languages, including English.
Today, the rabbi bridges different streams and communities within Judaism, an unusual feat helped by the fact that he chose not to associate himself fully with any one religious group, according to his son, Rabbi Menachem Even Yisrael.
Rabbi Steinsaltz is now eager to get on with his other work, including a concise commentary of the Bible. He says he regularly puts in a 17-hour day.
He leads Shefa, an umbrella organization for all his activities and educational institutions, including schools, seminaries and less formal centers of learning for men and women. Rabbi Even Yisrael is the executive director of Shefa, which has a United States affiliate, the Aleph Society.
Known as a sharp social critic, Rabbi Steinsaltz seems to have lost none of his bite. He has little patience for vanity or pretense, and says he admires the unsparing honesty and curiosity of small children, finding them more inspiring than some adult members of the species.
He is also fond of animals and spent time at the zoo, where he says he discovered how a peacock looks “undressed.”
“A peacock without feathers is like a very unappealing, big chicken,” he said, adding, “There are a lot of people like that.”
Tags: Jewish education, Jewish legacy, Jewish tradition, philosophy, religion, Talmud, Torah
Posted in Being Jewish
What Is The Legacy Passage Bar and Bat Mitzvah Program?
January 3rd, 2010
An innovative educational tool designed to address the rite-of-passage needs of the minimally-observant American Jewish family. An heirloom-quality family workbook and a deck of cards, the program radically re-contextualizes the Bar and Bat Mitzvah (BM) process (preparation and ceremony). The program’s approach transforms the BM from a celebration of the child’s Jewish self to a Jewish celebration of the child’s whole self - abilities, family, people-hood, and soul.
 Book Cover Design The Legacy Passage curricular tools provide the synagogue’s educator/Rabbi with:
● A well organized family education framework. A year long BM preparation course that meaningfully and seamlessly integrates the many BM strands into a coherent and powerful process.
● An artfully designed book, which is structured to neatly store the entire gamut of BM related documentation. It is intended to remain a child’s precious keepsake alongside other cherished religious books and paraphernalia.
The process incorporates three major components:
● Family and facilitator (rabbi/cantor/tutor) together clarify a vision for the BM preparation year. A shared mission is established, i.e. to transmit the family’s legacy to the maturing child - personal as well as Jewish. We thus invite the parents to be full and equal partners with the synagogue representative in carrying out a deeply meaningful and shared mission. This component focuses on conceptual clarity-making and relationship tone-setting with the BM family.
● The family takes the lead role in selecting the components of the child’s BM preparation program within the parameters of the synagogue ritual standards and values. The process of Engaged Choice (see ASEM assignment cards) allows each family to design a rite-of-passage program that focuses on their child’s strengths and interests. It further establishes and deepens the parent/synagogue partnership. The BM preparation program is pedagogically centered around two classical BM themes:
a. Legacy Passage.
b. Maturity training and celebration.
● The synagogue representative inserts into the book’s designated loose-leaf pocket information with practical advice regarding the nuts and bolts of producing their ceremony and accompanying celebration. The family need not reinvent the production wheel. The synagogue representative will offer pragmatic guidance in order to free-up family members’ time and attention toward the BM educational and emotional substance.
Why Legacy Passage?
For the majority of minimally-observant American Jewish families during the past couple of generations the BM ceremony has been a primary motivator for participation and affiliation with the synagogue. Participation with a Jewish educational system and/or prayer community whether Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, Renewal, or unaffiliated has provided families with a sense of belonging and pride. The participating BM child has enjoyed the rewards of personal recognition and accomplishment. However, for many families the engagement has primarily been child focused and lasted until the youngest completed his or her BM track. This dynamic has been further compounded by the fact that many a family and their young celebrant have gone through their Jewish educational phase experiencing a great deal of incongruity, dis-empowerment, and cognitive dissonance - belonging and pride notwithstanding. As a result most BM graduates have remained alienated from Jewish communal life until, at best, they themselves have become parents. And so a diminishing cycle continues.
We have developed the Legacy Passage BM program as a response to the incongruous experience that we believe is systemic to the contemporary American synagogue BM. Legacy Passage is designed to enable a different BM paradigm. We approach BM holistically. The program treats the BM preparation period and ceremony as a Jewish celebration of the child’s entire self - body, heart, mind, abilities, family, people-hood, and soul. Our goal is to deeply engage the full spectrum of the child’s and family’s life experience, not only the Jewish “sliver”. Our premise is that each individual in the family as well as the family system as a whole already possess the ingredients for a coherent, congruent, empowered, and Jewishly authentic rite-of-passage process.
Our approach follows from the analysis that a BM program that offers a compartmentalized experience, focusing primarily on the celebrant’s synagogue skill-set, perpetuates a disconnect between the child’s Jewish communal experience and the rest of his/her life. The latter will most likely win the contest of appeal. The Legacy Passage program operates under, and propagates, the assumption of identity wholeness rather than a contest between a “Jewish life” and a “rest of life”. Legacy Passage is designed to honor the student and family for who-they-are as-they-are helping them discover and mine their extant identity resources and strengths. Most importantly our program is designed to validate and enhance the family’s wishes for Jewish connection, learning, and practice. The family chooses, we, clergy and educators, follow and guide.
We have found that the family/child centered approach provides participants with a deep sense of relevance and lasting emotional satisfaction. It is our belief that as synagogues around the country adopt the Legacy Passage holistic approach, BM standards and practices will shift to better serve the minimally observant constituency, renewing an authentic reciprocity and loyalty between synagogues and a growing number of their members.
Bring Legacy Passage to your Hebrew School today!
Contact us for details
845 348 9810 or e-mail mylegacypassage@me.com
Published and distributed by Hebrew Learning Circles, Inc. (501c3)
Tags: Bar Mitzvah, Bat Mitzvah, Haftorah, initiation, Jewish education, Jewish legacy, Jewish tradition, life cycle, Parenting, religion, rite of passage, synagogue, tutor
Posted in Bar Mitzvah / Bat Mitzvah
Transformational Bar and Bat Mitzvah
October 30th, 2009
Does a child really transform or even transition from childhood to adulthood when they become a Bar or Bat Mitzvah at the age of 13 or 12 as is held by Jewish tradition? Does life change for the contemporary Jewish child after his/her ceremony? How about the rest of the family? Does anything change for them after the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony? Does the normative initiatory Jewish process today live up to its ancient promise, still echoing in our collective Jewish memory, of a transformational transition from minority to majority?
The traditional Native American youth who goes out solo into the woods on a long and challenging vision quest returns with a vision, a name, and a readiness to take his/her place among his/her community’s productive adults. The youth’s life has been transformed.
The young Biblical King David (Book of Samuel’s I, chapters 16, 17) single handedly kills a lion and a bear while out alone tending to his father’s flock of sheep. This event prepares him for the ultimate initiatory experience of his youth, defeating the giant Goliath. Thus King David is transformed into his role among the adult warriors of his people.
The contemporary American teenager mentoring with a qualified instructor toward earning his/her driver’s license is being prepared for high stakes activity along with the adults of his/her tribe. Once initiated, the teen will be entrusted with handling the potentially lethal moving vehicle, and will bear real consequences in the event of harmful misuse. S/he now has the power to kill or protect herself or others. The teen’s life is being transformed.
Is the Bar/Bat Mitzvah child’s life transformed after having successfully mastered his/her Haftorah? The experience of many suggests that not quite. But it should be. Bar/Bat Mitzvah by definition is a transformational term. Mitzvah in Hebrew has two different meanings. From the word Tzavta, company or group, Mitzvah means community. From the word Tzivah, instructed, Mitzvah means that which has been instructed or ruled. Bar, literally son, or Bat, literally daughter means in our context ‘member of’. Just as a child is a member of his/her family, so too son or daughter of Mitzvah plainly means ‘member of Mitzvah’. Thus the term Bar/Bat Mitzvah means member of a community sharing a common set of rules. Becoming a member of a morally demanding collective requires a character buildup, a transformation of one’s earlier nature.
But is stepping up to a status of greater moral demand in and of itself sufficient for maximizing the maturation benefits inherent in the Bar/Bat Mitzvah transition? Another interpretation of Mitzvah, as derived from Tzavta, company, suggests that perhaps a deeper cultivation is yet in order. Our sages tell us that Tzavta, company, could, in the context of Mitzvah, refer to being in company with God. That the rules, Mitzvot (Mitzvahs), are sacred and thus serve spiritually as the vehicles for, or the expressions of, our shared sacred values. In other words, our tribe’s Mitzvah system is structured around each our deepest capacity for existential and spiritual connectedness. When the Bar/Bat Mitzvah program addresses that capacity the Mitzvah potential is maximized and the transformation is palpable.
When we examine youth initiatory events across cultures and throughout history, whether among traditional native peoples, through the stories and characters of the the great mythologies (i.e. Bible), or in contemporary life, we find that the presence of seven programatic elements contribute to the successful and meaningful transformation of child to adult.
These elements bring about transformation in part because they interact with the initiate’s innate capacity to be “in company, Tzavta, with his/her God”. These initiatory programs help the young person confront life’s scared as well as practical edges at which moral and existential maturation is inevitable. We, the initiating adults must find the wisdom and courage to allow our maturing young-one to sufficiently extend themselves out and beyond the comfort of early parental protection and into the realm of a deliberate and growth-full challenge course.
The seven elements of the transformational maturation program are:
1. Child being mentored by parents in the sacred values of the family and by qualified instructors in the sacred values of the tribe. By ‘sacred values’ we mean those values for which keeping one would voluntarily forefeit comfort, treasure, or life should it be necessary.
2. Child being coached in clarifying his/her personal life mission as well as the collective mission of his/her tribe.
3. Child being trained in the ceremonial skills, both collective and individual, practiced by the family and tribe.
4. Child is taught how to master new practical adult life skills.
5. Child passes endurance challenges that help him draw on newly found reservoirs of energy and willpower.
6. Child declares his/her new set of mature commitments relating to self, family, tribe, humanity, and all living things.
7. Child receives affirmation and acknowledgment from the family and community through ceremony, speeches, gifts of ritual garb and paraphernalia, and gifts of the heart.
At a different time and in another place a Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony and the preparation period leading up to it would have included all of these ingredients providing for a powerful and organic life transition. At the other end of the process the boy or girl would start afresh with a sense of meaning and place, an experience that eludes many of us post moderns. Many parents report about their own Bar/Bat Mitzvah initiatory process as having offered irrelevant challenges at best and little challenge in areas of concern, interest, and potential personal growth if any. The lives of an entire generation has not been transformed by our experiences with our synagogues of youth.
The original Bar/Bat Mitzvah event has had many of its transformational ingredients fall by the wayside over the course of modern history leaving us with a set of noble yet dry traditional motions to go through. Albeit many a family, while bravely stepping up to the contemporary Bar/Bat Mitzvah plate, somewhere inside continue to grasp for the original and whole-life affirming initiatory experience that they intuit should be available and accessible.
Our children deserve more than a period of exposure to an often irrelevant (to them) Jewish culture followed by our magnanimous permission to them to choose whether or not to identify once the Hebrew School “burden” is over with. They deserve more than an opportunity to march up to the Bima, snagogue podium, perhaps for the last time, to offer a substantively obscure yet polished performance to a delighted audience of relatives and friends who are all the while taking great effort to mask their ritual discomfort.
This Rabbi believes that our children deserve the full transformational initiatory experience through which they enjoy meaningful self-discovery, profound bonding with parents and adult mentors, and a gained sense of their rightful place in the Jewish as well as human chain of generational transmission.
No, a transformational Bar/Bat Mitzvah event does not exist per-se but increasing attempts are being made. And no, our synagogue traditions are not to be discarded as they hold the precious wisdom of ritual heirlooms that have withstood the test of time. The renewal of Bar/Bat Mitzvah though, is not the task of the guardians of tradition. From them we gratefully learn. It is the job of post modern families who are willing to engage their maturing children with self-honesty, who are commited to reclaiming the power of Jewish generational transmission for our times, and have the courage to take charge.
Our children are entitled to meaningful instruction in the sacred values of their parents along with the ceremonial skills practiced by their families and communities. They are entitled to help in clarifying their sense of a life mission and that of their people. They are entitled to be initiated into, and trusted with, new adult life skills and responsibilities. They are entitled to being appropriately challenged and trusted on all levels of human being: physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. They are entitled to the challenge of making new significant commitments relating to themselves and the world around them. The ceremony day then becomes the icing on the Babka (traditional Eastern Europian Jewish chocolate flavored cake). While for many of us our Bar/Bat Mitzvah experience has left a scant impression if any, at the end of his or her day, our child deserves nothing less than having been transformed forever.
Tags: Bar Mitzvah, Bat Mitzvah, Haftorah, initiation, Jewish education, Jewish legacy, Jewish tradition, Parenting, prayer services, religion, rite of passage, Spirituality, synagogue, transformation, vision quest
Posted in Bar Mitzvah / Bat Mitzvah
The Paradox of Being Jewish
October 30th, 2009
One of the feats that many of us, progressive Jews, have to manage everyday is the paradox of balancing the universal and the particular; our worldliness with our Jewishness. Can both coexist in one person’s head, heart, and actions without twisting one’s personality into an over-baked pretzel?
I am not sure If I have the answer, as I often feel like an over-baked pretzel with extra salt as I attempt to reconcile my roles as Jew, rabbi, and passionate globalist. But, to the extent that you too live in this paradox, please know that I am sympathetic and I can assure you that you are not alone.
Lately, I have had probing conversations with families planning life-cycle ceremonies, parents concerned with educational content, or with individuals plainly sharing stirring thoughts about their own Jewish life paradoxes. These honest examinations of living as a contemporary Jew keep our Judaism and our universalism real and alive.
Caring deeply about something or someone often leads to closer scrutiny of it. Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, a contemporary Jewish progressive sage, once said: “It is OK to be proud of your Denomination as long as you are also sufficiently ashamed of it”. I agree and hence have been feeling deeply grateful for the opportunity to engage in lots of Big Talk of late.
In fact, exactly one month ago during Yom Kippur services we put Judaism on trial. Three congregants stepped up as impromptu Judges while the rest of us laid out a tough case challenging our own tradition. The views expressed were sharp, frank, and heartfelt. A most profound communal discussion ensued.
Well, yes, we found that we could not easily dismiss the charges. Our claims and concerns about our faith seemed to hold a great measure of validity. So we declared our beloved tradition “guilty-as-charged” but in the spirit of the holiday, we forgave her. The air was electrified with authenticity.
Authenticity, joy, camaraderie, and bold embrace of the paradox - fully Jewish? fully human? All in one “pretzel”? - That is precisely the workout that keeps our ancient tradition ever youthful, ever evolving, ever a living entity. Thank God for the paradox of being Jewish.
Tags: Add new tag, Jewish education, Jewish legacy, Jewish tradition, life cycle, philosophy, progressive, religion, Spirituality, universal
Posted in Being Jewish, HLC Article, Spirituality
Transformational Bar and Bat Mitzvah
May 31st, 2009
Does a child really transform or even transition from childhood to adulthood when they become a Bar or Bat Mitzvah at the age of 13 or 12 as is held by Jewish tradition? Does life change for the contemporary Jewish child after his/her ceremony? How about the rest of the family? Does anything change for them after the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony? Does the normative initiatory Jewish process today live up to its ancient promise, still echoing in our collective Jewish memory, of a transformational transition from minority to majority?
The traditional Native American youth who goes out solo into the woods on a long and challenging vision quest returns with a vision, a name, and a readiness to take his/her place among his/her community’s productive adults. The youth’s life has been transformed.
The young Biblical King David (Book of Samuel’s I, chapters 16, 17) single handedly kills a lion and a bear while out alone tending to his father’s flock of sheep. This event prepares him for the ultimate initiatory experience of his youth, defeating the giant Goliath. Thus King David is transformed into his role among the adult warriors of his people.
The contemporary American teenager mentoring with a qualified instructor toward earning his/her driver’s license is being prepared for high stakes activity along with the adults of his/her tribe. Once initiated, the teen will be entrusted with handling the potentially lethal moving vehicle, and will bear real consequences in the event of harmful misuse. S/he now has the power to kill or protect herself or others. The teen’s life is being transformed.
Is the Bar/Bat Mitzvah child’s life transformed after having successfully mastered his/her Haftorah? The experience of many suggests that not quite. But it should be. Bar/Bat Mitzvah by definition is a transformational term. Mitzvah in Hebrew has two different meanings. From the word Tzavta, company or group, Mitzvah means community. From the word Tzivah, instructed, Mitzvah means that which has been instructed or ruled. Bar, literally son, or Bat, literally daughter means in our context ‘member of’. Just as a child is a member of his/her family, so too son or daughter of Mitzvah plainly means ‘member of Mitzvah’. Thus the term Bar/Bat Mitzvah means member of a community sharing a common set of rules. Becoming a member of a morally demanding collective requires a character buildup, a transformation of one’s earlier nature.
But is stepping up to a status of greater moral demand in and of itself sufficient for maximizing the maturation benefits inherent in the Bar/Bat Mitzvah transition? Another interpretation of Mitzvah, as derived from Tzavta, company, suggests that perhaps a deeper cultivation is yet in order. Our sages tell us that Tzavta, company, could, in the context of Mitzvah, refer to being in company with God. That the rules, Mitzvot (Mitzvahs), are sacred and thus serve spiritually as the vehicles for, or the expressions of, our shared sacred values. In other words, our tribe’s Mitzvah system is structured around each our deepest capacity for existential and spiritual connectedness. When the Bar/Bat Mitzvah program addresses that capacity the Mitzvah potential is maximized and the transformation is palpable.
When we examine youth initiatory events across cultures and throughout history, whether among traditional native peoples, through the stories and characters of the the great mythologies (i.e. Bible), or in contemporary life, we find that the presence of seven programatic elements contribute to the successful and meaningful transformation of child to adult.
These elements bring about transformation in part because they interact with the initiate’s innate capacity to be “in company, Tzavta, with his/her God”. These initiatory programs help the young person confront life’s scared as well as practical edges at which moral and existential maturation is inevitable. We, the initiating adults must find the wisdom and courage to allow our maturing young-one to sufficiently extend themselves out and beyond the comfort of early parental protection and into the realm of a deliberate and growth-full challenge course.
The seven elements of the transformational maturation program are:
1. Child being mentored by parents in the sacred values of the family and by qualified instructors in the sacred values of the tribe. By ‘sacred values’ we mean those values for which keeping one would voluntarily forefeit comfort, treasure, or life should it be necessary.
2. Child being coached in clarifying his/her personal life mission as well as the collective mission of his/her tribe.
3. Child being trained in the ceremonial skills, both collective and individual, practiced by the family and tribe.
4. Child is taught how to master new practical adult life skills.
5. Child passes endurance challenges that help him draw on newly found reservoirs of energy and willpower.
6. Child declares his/her new set of mature commitments relating to self, family, tribe, humanity, and all living things.
7. Child receives affirmation and acknowledgment from the family and community through ceremony, speeches, gifts of ritual garb and paraphernalia, and gifts of the heart.
At a different time and in another place a Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony and the preparation period leading up to it would have included all of these ingredients providing for a powerful and organic life transition. At the other end of the process the boy or girl would start afresh with a sense of meaning and place, an experience that eludes many of us post moderns. Many parents report about their own Bar/Bat Mitzvah initiatory process as having offered irrelevant challenges at best and little challenge in areas of concern, interest, and potential personal growth if any. The lives of an entire generation has not been transformed by our experiences with our synagogues of youth.
The original Bar/Bat Mitzvah event has had many of its transformational ingredients fall by the wayside over the course of modern history leaving us with a set of noble yet dry traditional motions to go through. Albeit many a family, while bravely stepping up to the contemporary Bar/Bat Mitzvah plate, somewhere inside continue to grasp for the original and whole-life affirming initiatory experience that they intuit should be available and accessible.
Our children deserve more than a period of exposure to an often irrelevant (to them) Jewish culture followed by our magnanimous permission to them to choose whether or not to identify once the Hebrew School “burden” is over with. They deserve more than an opportunity to march up to the Bima, snagogue podium, perhaps for the last time, to offer a substantively obscure yet polished performance to a delighted audience of relatives and friends who are all the while taking great effort to mask their ritual discomfort.
This Rabbi believes that our children deserve the full transformational initiatory experience through which they enjoy meaningful self-discovery, profound bonding with parents and adult mentors, and a gained sense of their rightful place in the Jewish as well as human chain of generational transmission.
No, a transformational Bar/Bat Mitzvah event does not exist per-se but increasing attempts are being made. And no, our synagogue traditions are not to be discarded as they hold the precious wisdom of ritual heirlooms that have withstood the test of time. The renewal of Bar/Bat Mitzvah though, is not the task of the guardians of tradition. From them we gratefully learn. It is the job of post modern families who are willing to engage their maturing children with self-honesty, who are commited to reclaiming the power of Jewish generational transmission for our times, and have the courage to take charge.
Our children are entitled to meaningful instruction in the sacred values of their parents along with the ceremonial skills practiced by their families and communities. They are entitled to help in clarifying their sense of a life mission and that of their people. They are entitled to be initiated into, and trusted with, new adult life skills and responsibilities. They are entitled to being appropriately challenged and trusted on all levels of human being: physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. They are entitled to the challenge of making new significant commitments relating to themselves and the world around them. The ceremony day then becomes the icing on the Babka (traditional Eastern Europian Jewish chocolate flavored cake). While for many of us our Bar/Bat Mitzvah experience has left a scant impression if any, at the end of his or her day, our child deserves nothing less than having been transformed forever.
Tags: Bar Mitzvah, Haftorah, initiation, Jewish education, Jewish legacy, Jewish tradition, life cycle, Parenting, religion, rite of passage, Spirituality, synagogue, transformation
Posted in Bar Mitzvah / Bat Mitzvah
What is the Legacy Passage Bar and Bat Mitzvah program?
May 24th, 2009
Legacy Passage is an innovative Jewish educational tool designed to authentically address the rite-of-passage needs of the minimally observant American Jewish family. A heirloom-quality family workbook and a deck of cards, the program radically re-contextualizes the Bar and Bat Mitzvah (BM) process (preparation and ceremony). The program’s approach transforms the BM from a celebration of the child’s Jewish self to a Jewish celebration of the child’s whole self - abilities, family, people-hood, and soul.
The Legacy Passage curricular tools provide the synagogue educator/Rabbi a well organized framework for a year long BM preparation course that meaningfully and seamlessly integrates the many BM strands into a coherent and powerful process. The artfully designed book, which is structured to neatly store the entire gamut of BM related documentation, is intended to remain a child’s precious keepsake alongside other cherished religious books and paraphernalia.
Three major components:
1. Family and facilitator (rabbi/cantor/tutor) together clarify a vision for the BM preparation year. A shared mission is established, i.e. to transmit the family’s legacy to the maturing child - personal as well as Jewish. We thus invite the parents to be full and equal partners with the synagogue representative in carrying out a deeply meaningful and shared mission. This component focuses on conceptual clarity-making and relationship tone-setting with the BM family.
2. The family takes the lead role in selecting the components of the child’s BM preparation program within the parameters of the synagogue ritual standards and values. The process of Engaged Choice (see ASEM assignment cards) allows each family to design a rite-of-passage program that focuses on their child’s strengths and interests. It further establishes and deepens the parent/synagogue partnership. The BM preparation program is pedagogically centered around two classical BM themes:
a. Legacy Passage.
b. Maturity training and celebration.
3. The synagogue representative inserts into the book’s designated loose-leaf pocket information with practical advice regarding the nuts and bolts of producing their ceremony and accompanying celebration. The family need not reinvent the production wheel. The synagogue representative will offer pragmatic guidance in order to free-up family members’ time and attention toward the BM educational and emotional substance.
Why Legacy Passage?
For the majority of minimally-observant American Jewish families during the past couple of generations the BM ceremony has been a primary motivator for participation and affiliation with the synagogue. Participation with a Jewish educational system and/or prayer community whether Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, Renewal, or unaffiliated has provided families with a sense of belonging and pride. The participating BM child has enjoyed the rewards of personal recognition and accomplishment. However, for many families the engagement has primarily been child focused and lasted until the youngest completed his or her BM track. This dynamic has been further compounded by the fact that many a family and their young celebrant have gone through their Jewish educational phase experiencing a great deal of incongruity, dis-empowerment, and cognitive dissonance - belonging and pride notwithstanding. As a result most BM graduates have remained alienated from Jewish communal life until, at best, they themselves have become parents. And so a diminishing cycle continues.
We have developed the Legacy Passage BM program as a response to the incongruous experience that we believe is systemic to the contemporary American synagogue BM. Legacy Passage is designed to enable a different BM paradigm. We approach BM holistically. The program treats the BM preparation period and ceremony as a Jewish celebration of the child’s entire self - body, heart, mind, abilities, family, people-hood, and soul. Our goal is to deeply engage the full spectrum of the child’s and family’s life experience, not only the Jewish “sliver”. Our premise is that each individual in the family as well as the family system as a whole already possess the ingredients for a coherent, congruent, empowered, and Jewishly authentic rite-of-passage process.
Our approach follows from the analysis that a BM program that offers a compartmentalized experience, focusing primarily on the celebrant’s synagogue skill-set, perpetuates a disconnect between the child’s Jewish communal experience and the rest of his/her life. The latter will most likely win the contest of appeal. The Legacy Passage program operates under, and propagates the assumption of identity wholeness rather than a contest between a “Jewish life” and a “rest of life”. Legacy Passage is designed to honor the student and family for who-they-are as-they-are helping them discover and mine their extant identity resources and strengths. Most importantly our program is designed to validate and enhance the family’s wishes for Jewish connection, learning, and practice. The family chooses, we, clergy and educators, follow and guide.
We have found that the family/child centered approach provides participants with a deep sense of relevance and lasting emotional satisfaction. It is our belief that as synagogues around the country adopt the Legacy Passage holistic approach, BM standards and practices will shift to better serve the minimally observant constituency, renewing an authentic reciprocity and loyalty between synagogues and a growing number of their members.
History
The program evolved from our experience with tutoring and ceremony leading with approximately seventy students over the course of the past near decade. While serving members of Congregation B’nai Torah of Orange County NY (Conservative style) and Hebrew Learning Circles (www.hebrewlearningcircles.com) home-study-program participants since 1998, we have been searching for ways to address the ethno-spiritual needs of the minimally observant Jewish family. The all-in-one workbook and card deck concept emerged organically in 2006 as we began organizing our, and others’, best practices into a coherent pedagogical unit. The ASEM assignment-cards system has been met with great enthusiasm by our students ever since we introduced them in 2007. The assignments have been providing us invaluable opportunities for heuristic Jewish education. Our participating families have continually been our best teachers.
Since the start of 2009 we have been working diligently to prepare the program for publication and widespread use. Presentations about the Legacy Passage unit at the Ohalah Rabbinical conference in January 2009 have been received with enthusiastic interest. The wealth of useful feedback has helped us further fine-tune the Legacy Passage Family Workbook and the Legacy Passage Facilitator’s Edition in preparation for publication. Recent presentations of the curriculum to a select group of Rabbis and Jewish educators have stirred-up honest reflections, great discussions, and subsequent enthusiastic interest in the program.
Tags: Bar Mitzvah, Jewish education, Jewish legacy, life cycle, Parenting, religion, rite of passage, Spirituality, transformation
Posted in Bar Mitzvah / Bat Mitzvah
RAISING THE BAR AND BROADENING THE MEANING OF BAR AND BAT MITZVAH
March 31st, 2009
How do we transform the Bar/Bat Mitzvah rite of passage from “a celebration of the child’s Jewish self” to “a Jewish celebration of the child’s whole self”? We designed the innovative Legacy Passage program to do exactly that through engaged-choice. Parents and child are invited into the process as full partners as they choose from a wide range of meaningful engagement options.
The entire Bar and Bat Mitzvah process from beginning to end streams through three stages: training, ceremony, and celebration. Could each one of those stages become in and of itself a life changing experience that effects the child’s healthy emotional development as well as strengthen family bonds?
Our answer is a resounding yes. We view the Bar/Bat Mitzvah experience as a powerful and necessary rite of passage that contributes to the family and child’s overall well being. We begin by asking parents and child to consider the very essence of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah process, which is the passing of legacy from elders to youngster. Just as we, adults, have been shaped by the legacy of our parents – their values, beliefs, stories, unique skills, and important projects – so too our children will be shaped by ours. The life experience of many suggests that one’s Jewish legacy is part of a greater personal and universal whole. What would it look like then, if we passed down our entire legacy package to the Bar or Bat Mitzvah child, not only the Jewish traditional content? This question is our starting point.
The Legacy Passage program is designed to facilitate conscious, deliberate, and heartfelt transmission of a family’s treasured legacy to its young. Since each family’s legacy is unique, each Bar and Bat Mitzvah process, from its inception to the party, is custom designed in close collaboration with the entire family. We help the child’s elders engage with him or her as significant mentors. A set of intelligently challenging and fun assignments help the Jewish child try out and achieve new levels of maturity and connectedness under the guidance of his or her mentors. The ceremony and party thus celebrate the child’s special abilities, the family’s self defined values, the gift of Jewish people-hood, and the soul residing within.
This rite of passage, channeling a loving transmission down the generations, then becomes the soil in which the child’s future holds root. Our Rabbi and expert tutors are more than Jewish-educators. They are coaches who consider Jewish tradition as it uniquely applies in the context of each child’s whole life. Isn’t that exactly what the Bar and Bat Mitzvah rite was originally intended to be?
Tags: Bar Mitzvah, Bat Mitzvah, initiation, Jewish education, Jewish legacy, Jewish tradition, life cycle, Parenting, religion, rite of passage, synagogue, transformation
Posted in Bar Mitzvah / Bat Mitzvah
Raising the Bar and Broadening the Meaning of Bar and Bat Mitzvah
January 29th, 2009
How do we transform the Bar/Bat Mitzvah rite of passage from “a celebration of the child’s Jewish self” to “a Jewish celebration of the child’s whole self”? We designed the innovative Legacy Passage program to do exactly that through engaged-choice. Parents and child are invited into the process as full partners as they choose from a wide range of meaningful engagement options.
The entire Bar and Bat Mitzvah process from beginning to end streams through three stages: training, ceremony, and celebration. Could each one of those stages become in and of itself a life changing experience that effects the child’s healthy emotional development as well as strengthen family bonds?
Our answer is a resounding yes. We view the Bar/Bat Mitzvah experience as a powerful and necessary rite of passage that contributes to the family and child’s overall well being. We begin by asking parents and child to consider the very essence of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah process, which is the passing of legacy from elders to youngster. Just as we, adults, have been shaped by the legacy of our parents – their values, beliefs, stories, unique skills, and important projects – so too our children will be shaped by ours. The life experience of many suggests that one’s Jewish legacy is part of a greater personal and universal whole. What would it look like then, if we passed down our entire legacy package to the Bar or Bat Mitzvah child, not only the Jewish traditional content? This question is our starting point.
The Legacy Passage program is designed to facilitate conscious, deliberate, and heartfelt transmission of a family’s treasured legacy to its young. Since each family’s legacy is unique, each Bar and Bat Mitzvah process, from its inception to the party, is custom designed in close collaboration with the entire family. We help the child’s elders engage with him or her as significant mentors. A set of intelligently challenging and fun assignments help the Jewish child try out and achieve new levels of maturity and connectedness under the guidance of his or her mentors. The ceremony and party thus celebrate the child’s special abilities, the family’s self defined values, the gift of Jewish people-hood, and the soul residing within.
This rite of passage, channeling a loving transmission down the generations, then becomes the soil in which the child’s future holds root. Our Rabbi and expert tutors are more than Jewish-educators. They are coaches who consider Jewish tradition as it uniquely applies in the context of each child’s whole life. Isn’t that exactly what the Bar and Bat Mitzvah rite was originally intended to be?
Tags: Bar Mitzvah, Bat Mitzvah, Jewish education, Jewish legacy, life cycle, rite of passage
Posted in Bar Mitzvah / Bat Mitzvah
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