BAR MITZVAH-AN APPROACH TO SOCIAL MA TURITY

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Edgar Copeland
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1 Aaron B. Seidman Rabbi Seidman is Director of the B'nai B'rIth Hilel Foundation at George Washington University. BAR MITZVAH-AN APPROACH TO SOCIAL MA TURITY Some of the contemporar ferment among young people is the result of an unclear transition to maturty. Their only signifcant entry into the adult world is marked by a driver's license and a draft card. These "rites of passage" in a completely secular setting do not establish seriously accepted landmarks in a young person's life. In Jewish life, the ceremony of Bar Mitzvah still exists and while it may have lost some of its meaning in the American- Jewish sub-culture, it retains a degree of its original relevance. Despite a shift of emphasis, it remains a formal acknowledgement of growth. It gives the individual a sense of transition, a vantage point of perspective and the ceremonial recognition he needs. The fact that a boy of thirteen years and one day is considered an adult with regard to making a vow is found in the Talmud (Nidah 46a). In A vot 5: 26 it is also noted that there are important chronological highlights in a person's life. Yehuda ben Tema enumerates them as: "... at five years the age is reached for the study of the Biblical text, at ten for the study of the Mishna, at thirteen for the fulfllent of the commandments, at fifteen for the study of Gemara...".. The introduction of the youth to the more responsible forms of worship and sanctity is a rite of passage and recognized step toward social maturation. These rites are characterized as having elements of separation, transition and incorporation (A. Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. 1960). For the boy, special observances mark his coming of age. These are really culminating, ceremonial procedures designed to make an impression on the awareness of both the youth and 85

2 TRAITION: A Journal of Orthodox Thought the adults. They are preceded by an educational process and followed by new responsibilities at home and in the synagogue. In effect, when the boy reaches thirteen and the girl twelve, they are not initiated into secret rituals but attain a new status whereby they can participate as adults in the synagogue, in commercial contracts and in al religious ceremonies requirng adulthood. This would account for the absence of an elaborate Bar Mitzvah ceremony in the synagogues until the Fourteenth Century. (Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, I. Abraham, p. 32). Whe mention is made in the Orah Haim 225:2 of the father's formula for transferring responsibility to the son, no extensive celebration is indicated. Rather than celebration, Judaism strsses the obligation for the performance of religious duties. These duties are implicit in the term, Bar Mitzvah itself, which has often been translated as, son of commandments. The term, Bar, means son and Mitzvah is generally, commandment. However,.when Bar and Mitzvah are used in a compound word, they assume an idiomatic connotation. Thus the Talmud refers to a messenger who is bar mitzvah, obligated, as opposed to a slave "delav bar mitzvah," who is not obligated. (B. Mezia 96a) This is also related in the obverse to a bar onshin, one liable for punishment (Rasbi, Nidah, 45b). The Father's Role The boy's Bar Mitzvah ceremony is essentially his being called up to the Torah reading and being permtted to make the appropriate blessings. On that occasion, the father pronounces a special prayer which is more involved than appears on the fist reading. In earlier times this prayer was made by the father on the day the boy was thirteen and one day, regardless of his son's approach to the Torah. The father says: "Blessed (art Thou), who has relieved me of this responsibility." In effect, the father is launchig the young man on his own, with individual obligations. However, the translation is diffcult, and to complicate matters, there are two versions of the prayer. Both read: Blessed (art Thou), without mentioning the name of the Almighty, as would be the case in 86

3 Bar Mitzvah - An Approach to Social Maturity other blessings. They also add shepetorani meonsho, who has relieved me, or more precisely, for having made me guiltless, meonsho from his or its punishment, or responsibility. And the prayer could have been concluded at this point,. for it could be understood as the father expressing thanks. for having been relieved of his or its responsibility (meonsho). However, to what does this freedom from responsibility refer? Is it the currently accepted idea of the obligation that the father has for his son's misdeeds, or is it the father saying that he does not want the son to suffer for his (the father's) transgressions? With this question confronting them, the composers of the prayer added two words shel zeh, according to one version and one word, shelozeh, according to the other version. When the words she! zeh, of this, are used, it means that the father-child structure is indicated. In this unit concept, the children are the property of the father and they are responsible for the deeds of the owner of the corporate entity. Thus, until the age of thiteen the son is punished or responsible for the father's. sins (Magen Avraham, 225 O.H. 2 citing the Levush). The son, in other words, is subject to the environment into which the father has put him. The father, however, seeks freedom from this burden. He is constrained to bear the consequences of his own misdeeds, but the additional onus of having the son accountable for his (the father's) waywardness is unduly onerous. This view is in accord with the older rite of passage notion which sees the son as undifferentiated from the parent in the preliminal stage. The son, at puberty, separates himself by a rite of passage, in order to incorporate with the larger community, similar to that of his father but in his own right. When the one-word version shelozeh, of him, is used in the prayer by the father, it refers to his (the father's) responsibility to instruct his son and guide him. He accepts his son's mistakes and the punishment meted out is for the father. This, however, is no longer the case after the son attains the age of thirteen. Bar Mitzvah clears the father of this burden. Circumcision and Bar Mitzvah The age of thirteen at which Jewish law prescribes a boy's 87

4 TRADITION: A Journal of Orthodox Thought entr into the covenant of the Torah is the same age at which Ishmael was circumcised ( Genesis 17: 25 ). This later age for circumcision is still practiced in Islam, and derives from the custom of their progenitor. It may also derive from an ancient initiation ceremony practiced in different primitive tribes. An important factor is that in the rite a special markng of a permanent nature such as circumcision or the removal of a tooth makes the novice distinctively identical with the initiates. Further, some tribes consider the initiation period as one in which the applicant is looked on as dead. He is resurrected and taught how to live in a different manner than when he was a child (Van Gennep, loco cit. p. 75). While variations exist on the chronological levels of maturity, there can be no doubt that the initiation rites of passage do center about the phenomena of puberty. In Judaism, there is no similar stress on initiation as such. It is rather an integration of the individual into higher areas of responsibility as the maturing process unfolds. What is noteworthy is that the exact focus is not as important as the progress of the rite of passage in its overall aspects. In addition, the rite itself must be viewed as to its relative position within the total culture and the order in which it is presented. Transitions in Life The Bar Mitzvah rite of passage is not only a particular isolated event. In a larger framework all of an individual's "life crises" are his rites of passage; such as birth, maturity, marriage and death. Each rite has some elements of three steps in its unfolding. There is the preliminal phase, which A. Gennep designates as separation. The removal from the past is the beginning of the passage. The next is the liminal or threshold, and it is a step in itself, heightened by the ceremony and the reaction of the protagonist. It is labeled simply as transition, but involves more than passage alone. The third phase is the post-liminal, or the incorporation in the new position. Interestingly enough, the complex of rites of passage also 88

5 Bar Mitzvah ~ An Approach to Social Maturity apply to the periodicity of natural phenomena. Thus, the new month based on the lunar calendar is a rhythmic variable; the rites of expulsion of winter and incorporation of spring and the new year displacing the old, all fit in this category of passage. Contemporary Society and Bar Mitzvah The difculty of contemporary society may very well be an aimlessness in matters of a defined rite of passage from adolescence to adulthood. All that remains is a series of practical steps that have effac"ed any meaningful initiation of young people into adult society. Even the right to vote is not an undifferentiated, individual ceremony, and even if it were, it occurs too late in the chronogical spectrum (even at 18). Where there is only a pragmatic haphazard transition, the avenues are open for struggle, abrasive competition, cruelty and subconscious complexes. Thus, Freud's Totem and Taboo sees primitive behavior regarding patricide arising out of the son's jealousy because of the father's monopolization of the females and this can be extended to other areas also. The wealth of symbolism and ceremony of the Bar Mitzvah rite of passage cause a Jewish boy to become aware that there is a ritual recognition of his growth toward social maturity. Even where the real status does not come at once, it is a portent and a promise, and it gives the young person the sense of social mobility he seeks. It contains the "consensual quality of transition" (R. Sebald, Adolescence, 1968, p. 136) necessary to make a valid impression on a growing person and insure him of eventual advancement and self-definition. For a young person to have less is to deprive him of a sense of continuum and to cause him to thrash about in generalized rebellion. Bar Mitzva can help the Jewish youth maintain his equilibrium and perspective and focus his sensitivity on life-direction and relating to others more meaningfully. 89

Judaism. By: Maddie, Ben, and Kate

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