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Our Past in Present Tense

Bar And Bat Mitzvah Celebrations: From Talmudic Times To Hollywood


Dr. Yehuda Shabatay                                                                            .
 San Diego Jewish Times, July 28, 2006

Two thousand years ago our rabbis reached the conclusion that boys attained physical maturity by the time they turned 13 years of age, and girls a year earlier (Kiddushin 16b). Hence, they determined that a 13-year and one day old boy is a bar mitzvah (bar = son, in Aramaic, mitzvah=commandment, in Hebrew) and thus he is obligated to fulfill all the religious laws (Avot 5:1). Consequently, from that day on his father is no longer responsible for his actions – only the young man himself. On the other hand, a 13 year and one day old person has all the legal rights adults do: he may appear before a law court, and he is entitled to buy and to sell property. The only restriction was proposed by the great Rabbi Maimonides in the 12th century: he warned that such a young man may not be knowledgeable enough to handle real estate transactions.

But only in the 15th century did some congregations begin to establish a special ritual to mark a boy’s acceptance as a full-fledged member of the community. (Poor girls had to wait another four centuries to attain a similar recognition, first in France and in Italy, then in the Reform congregations of other Western European lands.) After the boy had reached his 13th birthday, according to the Jewish calendar, he was called up to the Torah, followed by his father, who recited a blessing for “getting rid” of his son’s wrongdoings (Genesis Rabbah 63:10). In Eastern European communities the services were followed by a festive meal (kiddush).

I recall the simple celebration of my bar mitzvah in my native Hungary. Since I attended Jewish day schools from the first grade on, the preparations for chanting my Torah portion and the Haftarah (reading from the prophets) were quick and easy. And since I went to our beautiful new synagogue every Shabbat throughout the years, having been called up to the Torah was by itself a most meaningful occasion. I did not expect any applause or any speeches in my honor. At the end of the service, someone announced that the congregants were invited to our home for kiddush. Following that, my relatives, friends, and I spent a lovely afternoon together and, all of the sudden, even my favorite teacher showed up.

All that was a long time ago and an even longer way from some of the bar and bat mitzvah celebrations I have witnessed, or read about, in the past decades. I can fully appreciate taking the celebrant to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, or to Masada, where the final battle against the Romans took place in 73 CE. But the jokes (are they jokes?) about bar and bat mitzvah safaris with camel processions, and the stories about holding such simchas (joyful events) in rented stadiums or in entire theme parks raise my blood pressure, particularly when I wonder whether the kids, and their parents, will show up in a synagogue in the foreseeable future. Thus the idea that there is “an awful lot of bar and far too little mitzvah” among well-to-do Jews in America today is far from an exaggeration. And when Mark Zakarin decided to write a script for a Hollywood movie that was to deal with bar and bat mitzvah celebrations, he had great difficulty in finding anything spectacular that had not done before. According to an article in the June 26 issue of the Jerusalem Report, in one (real) case the bar mitzvah bocher (boy) was “decked out in pugilistic robes bounded into a makeshift ring and delivered a knockout punch to a Dolph Lungren look-alike paid to take a dive. Local rumor has it that for another Hollywood affair, the bounteous basketball cheerleaders known as the Clipper Girls convened before one 13 year old and his titillating chums for a group striptease.”

As Zakarin desperately tried to come up with an extravaganza not done before, he thought of a Titanic-themed blowout in which the bar mitzvah boy declares: “I am the King of the Torah!” Unfortunately, the same garish production was presented at a bar mitzvah celebration five years earlier, in Pittsburgh. Mr. Zakari still managed to write a script for a movie and gave it the title Keeping up with the Steins. In that film, a wealthy Hollywood agent decides to compete with his business rival, Arnie Stein, by throwing the most ostentatious bar mitzvah party ever done in that part of the world. Only the agent’s long alienated father’s unwelcome reappearance changes the results. Granddad — who deserted his children many years before and showed up unexpectedly with a hippie girlfriend — convinces the boy “that the bar mitzvah is not about blowing other people away, but rather about assuming moral responsibility for your own life and decisions.” (What a strange person to discuss “moral responsibility!”) As a result, the celebration is downscaled to a more meaningful and intimate familial gathering.

I wonder what a Gentile viewer may think of Jewish religious practices while seeing that film. My only consolation is that the movie did not make it to the top of any list. And while some rabbis decided to show it to the parents of bar and bat mitzvah candidates well before the date set for each celebration, I can only hope that after the film’s presentation due emphasis will be placed on the original meaning of the event. Which would be as follows: this is not a funfair, but a serious cornerstone in your son’s or your daughter’s life. As far as Jewish tradition is concerned, he/she is no longer a child but someone who is fully responsible for his/her own deeds. He/she must continue to learn about Judaism and practice its laws and customs, enroll in a Jewish high school program, and join a suitable group of his/her peers.

With such a preparation we may reduce the “garishness, the grotesqueness, the extravagance, the shallowness, competitiveness, commercialism, and hedonism” that, in Rabbi Harold Schulweis’s words, quoted in the Jerusalem Report, have become the hallmark of so many bar and bat mitzvahs in America today. Moreover, we may look forward to greeting each young man and woman in our midst as they continue to attend Hebrew and Jewish Studies classes, youth group meetings, and religious services regularly.

Dr. Yehuda Shabatay received rabbinical training in Budapest, a master of jurisprudence degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his doctorate in Hebrew literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York. He was engaged in Jewish educational administration over most of his career and now teaches Jewish studies and history at Palomar College and San Diego State University.