Shalom! This video is about the Bar and Bat Mitzvah. Well, what is it? Well, today in many synagogues, a boy or grown up of 13, stands to the bima usually on Sabbath, each from the Torah, chant a Haftarah reads, some of the service. It's often read as speech and a lot of what they do depends on the specific practices of incarnation and of the denomination.
For the synagogues, which don't allow girls to read from the Torah or do things publicly, obviously would be different. Now, where does this come from and what does it really mean? Well, there are some ancient sources that have some hints about 13 and there are sort of non-explicit references to it, the main source comes from the Mishnah which is the codification of the oral law that has finished till 220. It lists there different thing that happened at different ages and it says, the age of 13, you come to Mitzvoth, commandments.
So basically what happens is when a boy reaches 13 historically, he now becomes subject of the commandments. Before that the terms were gadol which means older or bar 'onshin which means you are subject to the punishments, you are transgressing the commandments. The word Bar is not Hebrew, it's Aramaic and it means son but Bat is a Hebrew word and we say, Bas Mitzvah, it would be Askenazi, but the Bat Mitzvah would be Sephardic, same thing but there was no Bat Mitzvah until 1922 when Mordecai Kaplan, who eventually founded in his name the Reconstructionist Movement, was the Rabbi who decided to base the Judaism in New York. He has daughter, Judith, he did think it was fair that she had not a Bar Mitzvah so we created Bat Mitzvah.
So in many Jewish groups, there are Bat Mitzvah, even New York orthodox said, we are trying to Bat Mitzvah where the girl does some things. And my synagogue is completely egalitarian so girls do exactly, can do exactly what the boys do. And now -- so after this ceremony in our synagogue, we do the Haftarah, they read from the Torah, they read some of the prayers, they write d'var Torah; speech about the Torah portion of Haftarah. They also do a personal prayer; they lead some of the prayers at the end.
Family participates too and the parents talk with the child, child has an Aliyah which is the main ritual of the Bat Mitzvah. Then following that is often parties -- one of the kind of fun phrases the Rabbi use, they should be more Mitzvah than Bar using of course the other meaning of Bar. Sometimes they are very elaborate and you can read about excessive extravagant celebrations but often times too they very nice, the specific myths there is called a seudat mitzvah, that should be a celebratory religious meal following the synagogue and hopefully, kosher and shabbistic of its Sabbath.
That's basically the idea. There is also now a custom, sometimes for adults to have a Bar or Bat Mitzvah if they never had once as a child, they are still Jewish. But it becomes meaningful for people as adults as they didn't have and especially, women sometimes didn't have the opportunity they have a Bat Mitzvah when they were younger, they will have one later and we have a training program online, for example, of how to train people, there are lots of resources now for how somebody can learn a Haftorah online, for example.
Sometimes when people are 83, they'll have a second part of the Mitzvah because, of course, 70+13, 70 being sort of a biblical life span and then 13 being a second Bar Mitzvah. So those are some of the ideas. Also, one point you should know about the Reform Movement and the way with the idea Bar/Bat Mitzvah. They substituted confirmation for it but now they brought back Bar/Bat Mitzvah as part of the regular routine and reformed synagogues and it goes out like that.
Now what is the parent's obligation here? In a traditional synagogue, there is a broad hall of appearance, say, a blessing that I am now no longer legally responsible for the transgressions of this child. That sometimes not done in reformed or reconstructionist synagogues, parents do a blessing that the child will continue in a Jewish way.
Anyway, that's a little bit of the background of Bar/Bat Mitzvah that have major and blessed life cycle of ritual and passage in Judaism. Other cultures have other rituals and life cycle events. I read an interesting article a couple of years ago about how non-Jewish kids were being invited to their friends, Bar/Bat Mitzvah that there were so loved by the attention given to this child and the party afterwards and the presents, they asked their parents if they could have a Bat Mitzvah without the Jewish stuff. So the parents would have a big party for the kid like a sweet 16 but when the kid is 13 so they wouldn't feel left out.
Anyway, those are some of the basic ideas and backgrounds of this adolescent life cycle. But it's interesting that Judaism shows rather than other things to focus in around religious training, chant learning our holy scriptures, teaching being in the synagogue and making this a transition from childhood to adulthood.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services