Local News
March 28, 2008
Unusual Bar Mitzvah: Snider Family’s Modern Twist
Cambridge
J.H. Snider
Special to the Jewish Times
My wife and I struggled with how to make the bar mitzvah experience as meaningful as possible for our third and last child, a twelve year old boy who knew the Orioles’ batting lineup far better than the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Our two older children, both girls, had worked hard to excel at every bat mitzvah task the rabbis and cantors had thrown at them.
Despite the girls’ success in doing what had been asked of them, my wife and I were still dissatisfied. “If the goal of the bar mitzvah was to give the kids a strong sense of Jewish identity,” we asked, “was this the best use of their precious time?” After thinking about this question carefully, we decided that the answer was “no.” The girls had been told that participating in rituals made them Jewish adults, but they were able to see that these rituals were perfunctory at best for most Jewish adults in their lives. For us, as for many modern Jews, identity came instead from a shared tradition, history, and values—not weekly participation in services.
And so, for our third child, Solon, we decided that a substantial portion of his bar mitzvah prep time should be devoted to studying Jewish history and literature. Solon would still chant his Haftorah and Torah portions, as well as a handful of Shabbat prayers, but we would deemphasize these tasks relative to others less likely to be resented as irrelevant or even hypocritical. We hoped that by building new skills and knowledge (both religious and secular), while also seeing how Jews and Judaism have persisted for millenia, Solon would emerge not only feeling positive about his experience, but also feeling connected to his tradition—the essence of becoming a bar/bat mitzvah.
Accordingly, we embarked on what turned out to be a long investigation to find Solon the right tutor. We started with local resources, including the Chabad rabbi in our county and the Hillel director of a nearby University. The central difficulty, in our judgment, was to find someone with an intimate knowledge of Jewish literature appropriate for a 12-year-old boy. We weren’t even sure that such literature existed. The Judaica stacks at the local Barnes & Noble and Borders groaned with masterful books for adults. But there was no Judaica subsection for kids, let alone one for bar/bat mitzvah age kids who grew up in a secular household.
Unfortunately, we could not find a single Jewish educator within thirty miles of our Maryland home who seemed to know contemporary Jewish literature for young kids and who was willing to invest the time to acquire the necessary knowledge. This led us to look for someone beyond a reasonable driving distance.
In the end, we found a young Brandeis graduate student in Judaic studies. The student, Daniel Parmer, had worked for a Jewish book review and could reel off more than a dozen books that we agreed would be appropriate for Solon. Dan’s “course” began in early September 2006 and ended in late September 2007. The bar mitzvah took place on October 20, 2007.
Our instructions to Dan were simple: in addition to providing Solon with a broad knowledge of Jewish history, the books had to be page turners. Solon had to want to read the books. Otherwise, the course would be doomed to fail.
The basic arrangement we worked out was that Solon would read an average of a book every two weeks and discuss them with Dan every Sunday evening for a half hour. At the end, as part of his bar mitzvah speech, Solon would have to find a way to summarize everything he learned from reading all those books. He would also have to find a way to link this summary into an analysis of his Torah portion.
Without new information technology, this long-distance tutoring option would not have been possible. Waltham, Mass., where Brandeis is located, is 500 miles from our home in Severna Park, Maryland. Driving Solon to his tutor was out of the question. But using our family’s broadband Internet connection with Microsoft’s Windows Live Program, Solon and Dan could videoconference for free, providing the face-to-face contact that we believed was vital.
Using Amazon.com, we could also order all the books conveniently and often at used-book prices. Even a decade ago assembling such an obscure collection of books would have been a much more time-consuming and expensive undertaking.
The theme of the course Dan and Solon jointly worked out was “Jewish Survival.” The stories described a great assortment of different types of Jews across four continents and five centuries, starting with the Spanish Inquisition and ending with contemporary Jews in Israel. The syllabus included 21 books and 2 movies (see sidebar).
Of course, not every Jewish child would thrive with such a curriculum. But the same can be said for the narrowly focused chanting curriculum that currently dominates bar/bat mitzvah training.
Solon came from a family of readers and was already used to reading before going to bed, so what we were asking him to do already fit in closely with his normal bedtime routine. Clearly, too, not everyone has access to the technology and resources necessary to exploit such a learning opportunity. Still, we hope others can learn from our experience.
Our family chose a book-based curriculum, but a movie-based curriculum might be more appropriate and equally effective for other kids. With the explosive growth of broadband Internet and online movie services, this should become an increasingly viable option.
Online discussions are great for working parents and busy kids because they save all the time spent in transit to a physical class. But the discussions need not be one-on-one, which would be too expensive for most families. Moreover, having other kids discuss the books or movies at the same time would probably have enhanced Solon’s experience, especially if the kids came from different parts of the United States or other countries. With the Internet, distance is no longer a cost factor.
The most valuable first step might be to make available to parents and kids lists of good age-appropriate Jewish literature and movies. Most Jewish parents and kids have no idea that such resources even exist, let alone where they might find them. Hopefully, too, if more young kids read this type of literature, more talented authors will seek to create it.
The bar/bat mitzvah experience has evolved considerably over the last few hundred years. Perhaps most of the creative effort has gone into the bar/bat mitzvah parties before and after the service. But even traditions such as the passing of the Torah scrolls, the emergence of bat mitzvahs, the putting on of the tallis, and the granting of aliyas to women, have changed significantly. The recent outpouring of Jewish children’s literature, combined with the ongoing information technology revolution, is making possible yet additional options to cultivate a sense of Jewish history and identity in our bnai mitzvah-age children. This, in turn, is creating the opportunity to turn the d’vor Torah into a much more meaningful part of the service for both bar/bat mitzvah and congregation alike. Our son’s experience demonstrates that the 21st century may yet be a time for this venerable institution to achieve renewed vigor and meaning in the lives of Jewish families.
–– J.H. Snider, President of the Maryland-based http://www.iSolon.org , is currently a Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Solon’s Bar Mitzvah “Syllabus”
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In preparation for his bar mitzvah, Solon not only spent many years attending conventional reform and conservative synagogue education programs, but also spent a year enriching his knowledge through independent study of Jewish literature.
Using the theme of “Jewish survival,” Daniel Parmer, a graduate student at Brandeis University, worked with our family to put together a rich, age-appropriate, and highly motivating course of study for Solon that involved reading 21 books, watching two literature-based movies, and discussing these works via weekly video- and phone-conversations.
Aleichem, Sholom: Tevye Bukiet, Melvin Jules and Roskie, David, eds: Scribblers on the Roof: Contemporary Jewish Fiction. (Selections: “Gifts” by Myra Goldberg, “Readers Digest” by Dara Horn, “Stone” by Cynthia Ozick, “First Date” by Jonathan Rosen, “What Must I Say to You” by Norma Rosen, “Mrs. Saunders Writes to the World,” by Lynne Sharon Schwartz, and “Lazar Malkin Enters Heaven” by Steve Stern).
Exodus (movie, adapted from Leon Uris’s The Exodus)
Fiddler on the Roof (movie adapted from Sholom Aleichem’s stories)
Foer, Jonathan Safran. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Gordon, Noah. The Last Jew
Hoffman, Alice: Incantation
Horn, Dara: The World To Come
Keret, Etgar: The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God
Lasky, Kathryn: Broken Song
Lasky, Kathryn: Dreams in the Golden Country: The Diary of Zipporah Feldman, a Jewish Immigrant Girl
Miklowtiz, Gloria D. Masada: The Last Fortress
Orlev, Uri: (Hillel Halkin, translator).The Lady with the Hat
Papernick, Jon: The Ascent of Eli Israel and Other Stories
Potok, Chaim: The Chosen
Rosenbaum, Lisa Pearl: A Day of Small Beginnings
Rubin, Derek, ed: Who We Are: On Being (and Not Being) a Jewish American Writer. (Interviews with Cynthia Ozick, Chaim Potok, Philip Roth, Rebecca Goldstein, Allegra Goodman, Binnie Kirschenbaum, and Dara Horn)
Sachs, Marilyn: Lost in America
Sfar, Joann: The Rabbi’s Cat
Taylor, Sydney: All of a Kind Family.
Waldman, J.T: Megilat Esther
Weisel, Elie: Souls on Fire
Yolen, Jane: The Devil’s Arithmetic