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.
