"What if I Drop the Torah?": Tensions and Resolutions in Accomplishing B'nai Mitzvah Rituals

Over the twentieth century, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, the Jewish rite-of-passage that takes place at age thirteen (or twelve for girls in Orthodox communities), has reshaped and transformed the American synagogue, the nature of the Jewish life-cycle, the lives of individual American Jewish families, and the content and meaning of the event itself. In America, the ritual has become a central symbol of Jewish continuity both for individual Jews and for the Jewish community as a whole. Whether the student manages a flawless performance or struggles through with whispered help, the ritual works. Parents and grandparents are amazed and awed, friends and relatives are moved to tears, and the students stands a little taller and prouder. This happens with such regularity that it is common to trivialize or mock the event. In truth, it is risky to expect a (possibly recalcitrant) thirteen-year-old to publicly represent both the core values of Judaism and his family's honor; it is sociologically remarkable that virtually all children achieve that goal./nPrecisely because the stakes are so high and because the event can fail in so many ways, synagogues invest substantial effort in preparation and enactment. The ritual influences the content of Jewish education, how Jewish professionals allocate their energy, and the nature of the central religious service itself. At the same time, individual families spend considerable time, money, and effort in preparing for and enacting both event and celebration following. This book results from my study of Bar/Bat Mitzvah in congregations in the San Francisco Bay Area, undertaken with the goal of understanding what Bar/Bat Mitzvah does to and for families and congregations. The research included extensive interviews and observations, which provide an analysis of the place of Bar/Bat Mitzvah in Jewish life--an analysis that overturns common assumptions about the event./nUnderlying the project is an understanding that the place of Bar/Bat Mitzvah in American life begins with the "Bar Mitzvah Bargain." In the early to mid-twentieth century, Jewish leaders understood Bar Mitzvah as, at best, a distraction from "real" Judaism (many leaders, particularly at the denominational level, still see it this way). When attempts to discredit the Bar Mitzvah failed to stem its popularity, religious leaders used that very popularity to strike a bargain: rabbis would formally sanction the ceremony with their presence in return for time to educate the children religiously. Leaders used the Bar Mitzvah as the means to inculcate Jewish belief and practice, with the hope that this attachment would continue beyond the event. It was this "Bar Mitzvah bargain" that resulted in the place of Bar/Bat Mitzvah in congregational Jewish life./nIn managing the ritual, rabbis, teachers, and families negotiate a set of the tensions inherent in the "Bar Mitzvah Bargain" and Bar/Bat Mitzvah's role in the Jewish American imagination and in congregational life. Understood this way, Bar/Bat Mitzvah becomes a means to understand how both families and Jewish professional leadership negotiate American and Jewish values and behavior in the face of changing cultural norms. This problem is hardly unique to Jews, but is an example of how rituals act both to maintain tradition and enable that tradition to respond to broader cultural shifts, as the congregation acts as the field on which religious leadership and lay participants negotiate religious belief and practice./nI conducted my research in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is characterized by liberal politics, determined inclusivity and pluralism, and the assertion of diversity. While the fifth or sixth largest Jewish community in the United States, historically this region has been Jewishly diffuse and acculturated. Today, Bay Area Jews have an intermarriage rate of over 50% and a congregational affiliation rate of around 22% or less. At the same time, the region supports a rich Jewish cultural life that includes several Jewish Film Festivals, an active adult learning program, and a number of Bay-Area wide arts, religious, and sports events. As a result, the Bay Area is an extremely fruitful place to consider how minority groups and religions adapt to an increasingly pluralistic and diverse environment./nThrough interviews with congregational leaders across 60% of Bay Area congregations and observations and further interviews at five representative congregations, I gathered data from many perspectives on Bar/Bat Mitzvah preparation and performance, as well as on its effect on the congregation and family. From this material, I found four areas of concern that are inherent in the place of Bar/Bat Mitzvah in American Jewish life. These are not problems that can be solved, but rather productive tensions that, howsoever negotiated by leaders and laity, are ever-present. They include: creating an authentic ritual, assuring competence during preparation and performance, negotiating boundaries to participation, balancing needs of family and congregation, and developing connection and future continuity./nCreating a sense of reality is the existential problem at the heart of rituals which are, by definition, symbolic acts and rely on shared beliefs about meaning and consequences. In many ways, Bar/Bat Mitzvah is defined by shared expectations of content. Yet rabbis, parents, and students often have different goals for and ascribe different meanings to Bar/Bat Mitzvah. All congregations negotiate these different perspectives as they strive to create and communicate authenticity. This chapter argues that BBM takes on four different meanings--a change of status from Jewish child to Jewish adult; a claim to Jewish identity and consequent affiliation with the Jewish people; the performance of a difficult Jewish task; and a celebration of the child and event--each of which are addressed in the ritual itself./nHowsoever Bar/Bat Mitzvah is understood by students, parents, or rabbis and teachers, the ritual includes a performance and making sure that performance is enacted with some modicum of competence matters. Thus, this is the area of greatest concern and the area into which everyone puts the most effort. That effort begins with curricular decisions within supplementary schools, continues with training for the event itself, may include family education, and concludes with managing the public face of the ritual to achieve a competent performance./nLegitimate participants are necessary for an authentic ritual. Over the past several decades, the increase in intermarried families joining congregations and increased desire for egalitarian religious practice have resulted in pressure to include non-Jews (in liberal congregations) and girls (in Orthodox congregations). Congregations determine who can participate and in what capacity, as they balance the desire for inclusiveness with the desire to maintain traditional boundaries./nThe Bar/Bat Mitzvah service is both a peak event in the life of an individual family and (sometimes) the time for congregational worship. Different congregations strike the balance between public service and private event in different ways, denominational norms and the size of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah cohort being the factors that most affect that balance./nTogether these tensions form a rubric that can be used to examine the relationship between change and stability in both ritual and community. That is, changes to the ritual affect the community; changes to community and culture are reflected in the ritual.

Advisor: Swidler, Ann
Fischer, Claude S