From Memorial Service to B’not Mitzvah
Last Saturday afternoon, not too many hours after conducting Al Watts’ memorial service at our church, Peggy and I attended a B’not (plural of bat) Mitzvah at nearby Temple Israel. This was a double bat mitzvah (literally, daughter of the commandment) performed for and by two 12-13 year old girls as they claimed their Jewish faith. The two hour service included each of them reading from the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, in Hebrew. Not a phonetic transliteration, mind you, but the actually Hebrew words and letters with no punctuation on the handwritten Torah scroll.
The ceremony was as user friendly as possible, since such occasions are ones in which the boy (bar) or girl (bat) invite all their family and lots of friends. We were told after the reception that we had attended the middle school social function of the year! Those young people had a lot more energy to party than I did at 9 o’clock on a Saturday evening!
I told the rabbi that I remember taking our daughter Emily to a Girl Scout Sabbath at a Jewish temple in New York when she was maybe third grade. I was impressed then by the young Girl Scout who got up and read in Hebrew from the Torah. I was similarly impressed last Saturday when I saw two young women coming to maturity in their faith.
It takes a bit of courage for lay readers, but at least one of any age who reads from the Bible at our church gets to read it in plain English, and I send it to them in advance, so they don’t need to stand up there and look at some strange letters and try to figure out how to say them. And I suppose a bar or bat mitzvah is comparable to our rite of confirmation, when, after an appropriate amount of study, a teenager becomes a full member of the church.
Such rituals are important, for they ground us in our faith. Telling of my Saturday experience on Sunday afternoon to a Jewish friend, she said excitedly that she was not able to have her bat mitzvah until an adult, because it was not done at her temple for girls when she was younger.
While Saturday’s service was two hours, at the end of a long and draining day, I could easily follow the readings (translated) from Deuteronomy, Exodus and Psalms, for they are all ones we use in our church as we share the Jewish heritage that is at the foundation of our Christian faith. After all, Jesus was Jewish!
Charlie Ensley
Senior Minister