At the end of the month our family is throwing a celebration in honor of our eldest's Bar Mitzvah. In Jewish tradition, the Bar Mitzvah is a rite of passage, signifying the beginnings of adulthood and taking on the responsibilities of ones own actions. Though these days we still think of thirteen year-olds as children, this concept was established in the days when young men (and women) got married at eighteen (or younger) and died only a few decades later.
Our celebration will consistent of two separate parts. We will begin the day with prayer services, my son will read from the Torah and he will discuss some lessons that he learned from the portion of the Torah that he has studied. Our rabbi will make a speech as will I. After the prayer services, the guests will move into a social hall in which there will be a luncheon and dance party. It should be both meaningful and a lot of fun.
Plans for the celebration have been coming along very smoothly. We began planning months in advance as I wanted a chance to enjoy the party rather than stress over last minute details. The bumps in the road only began these past two weeks. As I have mentioned in previous posts, my husband and I grew up as Orthodox Jews. As adults, we left the Orthodox (OJ) denomination as our beliefs did not coincide with theirs and joined the Conservative Jewish (CJ) movement. My husband and I are not very religious people and are certainly not observant at the level of our siblings and parents. However, we are active members of our community and have strong Jewish identities.
As my husband put into words, our families have never approved of our religious choices. It has been pretty much accepted that as long as we abide by their rules, it's all ok. So, when we spend time with them, we do so with full respect of their way of life. For example, we are welcome to join them for Passover Seders but we must observe Passover in the OJ manner. They would never come to us if we were to invite them to have a Passover Seder at our house.
Anyway, during the prayer service at the Bar Mitzvah there are traditional honors that are generally reserved for members of the extended family. They, for example, are invited to carry the Torah or take part in a section of the prayer service. In every bar or bat mitzvah that I have ever gone to, members of the family have taken active roles in the prayer services of their loved ones. In our case, at the advice of our rabbi, we decided to approach each member of the family whom we wanted to honor and speak with them about accepting the honors. Normally a reaction would be, "of course! I would be honored to!" Unfortunately, not so for us. The responses so far, with the exception of my father **and since writing this post, my husband's brother, the responses have been, "No. I am sorry, I hope you can understand."
At first, I didn't understand because despite my many years of Jewish education, I did not know what Jewish law would be violated in participating in our service. I've since been educated. This is what has been explained to me. Two great rabbis, ones that have responded to questions regarding participation in CJ services have said it is not permitted. Apparently my community is considered a "community of sinners" and it is therefore prohibited to participate in a prayer service with us. However, most of my OJ family members are coming to the celebration. Some are skipping the service altogether as they do not believe they can even be in that part of our synagogue.
At the Bar Mitzvah celebration it is going to be very obvious to our friends and community that there is an absence of family participation. Some will be appalled, feel sorry for us or even embarrassed for us. There will be snickers. I have no doubt that they will know that we offered honors to our family members but we were turned down.
My husband and I discussed the fact that this is sneak peak of what will be inevitably more serious issues if we are to be fortunate enough to adopt CD. As a result, we are already making plans to separate out family from the religious celebrations over conversion and giving her a Hebrew name and we will have to simply celebrate the adoption part with them instead (I am under the impression that the adoption will be celebrated by the family). We will keep our invitations to join us in celebrating her becoming a member the Jewish peoplehood (we plan to cater a lunch after she is given a Jewish name) to those who, well, will find it celebratory.
14 comments:
My advice is, don't stress about it. People may not really notice that much. Just enjoy your son's day!
I'm not surprised, though. When my wife & I got married, my parents were very firm that we not use the facilities of a Conservative shul. That put a crimp on our search for wedding halls. But apparently, a lot of our frummer relatives wouldn't enter a non-Orthodox shul, at all. That was the first I'd heard of it.
As it is, though my wife and I occasionally daven at egalitarian minyanim or even Conservative shuls, I never mention it to my parents. They would have a big issue with that.
Are you converting CD for the community, your family, for school purposes, or for yourselves? I'm not criticizing, just wondering what the motivation is, if you're not that ritually religious. I know you are strongly Jewish, but CD will still get the benefits of being raised in a such a household even without a conversion, and then can make the decision to convert if she likes when she can make the decision herself. That doesn't mean you have to skimp on any of raising her Jewishly.
The quandary that you find yourself in is not of your making. I am sure that if permitted by Halacha all of your OJ relatives would participate in the ceremony and accept honors in the Synagogue. The fact, however, is that since the establishment of Reform Judaism in the mid 1800's The greatest Orthodox rabbis, from Moshe Feinstein to J.B. Soloveitchik have ruled that the participation of an OJ in a non-Orthodox religious ceremony is tantamount to praying in a church. In fact, many rabbis hold that it is better to enter St. Peter's church in Rome than to enter Temple Emanuel on Fifth Avenue. The fear, of course, is that OJ is more threatened by Reform or Conservative Judaism than the Catholic Church. That is why the Sanhedrin planted Paul (Saul) amongst Jesus' apostles and instructed him to create a religion so far removed from Judaism that the Jews of that time would reject it. Your relatives are constrained by their rabbis and Halacha. I am sure that they are agonized by the fact that they will not be able to participate in the ceremony. Unfortunately, it is a lose-lose situation and you should not be angry with them. If they are truly religious, they have no choice.
Kofer,
"My rabbi said to spit in your face" is not ok just because you are "religious" and someone else told you to do it. We own our own behaviors. You spit in someone's face, don't tell me you will run and blame your rabbi or tell me that you are agonizing over it. It's still isn't nice to be spat upon.
Dishonoring my family at our simcha and saying but my rabbi told me to do it doesn't change the fact that we are being dishonored. We are entitled to have feelings about it. And yet, all are still invited and all were still offered honors.
Philo,
We go to shul (synagogue) on a fairly regular basis, often share shabbat meals with friends, send our kids to Jewish Day Schools, are Zionists with much of our family living in Israel, celebrate all Jewish holidays. . .Ninety percent or more of our bar mitzvah guests will be Jewish because those are the people in our lives, our extended family.
Whether CD is Jewish or not is not related to how much we love her or feel that she is a part of our family. However, I will not subject her to a life in which she is the only nonJew in the family, in the community, and where she is the nonJewish child at a Jewish dayschool (even if they would accept her). Why would I do that? The conversion process is painless, quick and is a simple traditional way to say, welcome to our family, welcome to our tribe, here is a name that represents your membership, one that is yours for as long as you want it and no one can take it away. My sons did not choose to be Jewish, they were born into a Jewish family. At adoption, she will be "born" into a Jewish family too.
Side point though, if we knew anything about her heritage other than she is a Caucasian American, we would have happily integrated it into her sense of self as well.
Isn't this the same Orthodox Judaism where we learned that to embarrass someone is akin to killing them?
Isn't there a concept of love of your fellow Jew? This is certainly no expression of love!
It seems that people pick and choose in religion all the time. This time they are choosing to dishonor and potentially embarrass you even if that same religion normally prohibits that. What a time to make a public statement in front of all the most important people in your life about much they disrespect you and the choices you have made.
I guess I am lucky. My family is Orthodox, but I can't imagine them treating others this way.
Protect your family and yourself. You are good people and deserve to be treated as such. Protect your kids from this nonsense as much as you can.
This whole business about not participating in the Bar Mitzvah has political sources, not halachik ones (based in Jewish Law). I can understand why you handle their not eating off your plates well, but feel like this is spitting in your face. I would feel the same exact way if I were in your shoes.
However, congratulations and mazal tov!
I followed a conversation that you were having with @joshua613. Like he said, separating yourself from the community, from the OJ point of view, is not supposed to be "fun." And as he said, from the point of view of Orthodox Judaism, those who break the Sabbath are considered "rashaim" as they are committing sins that would have led to execution back in the day.
I doubt anyone turning down your honors are agonizing over it as Kofer said. They are more likely proud of their choice and it is a not so subtle way to let you know that in their eyes you meet this criteria of "rasha."
Your friends will feel your pain, but I know there will be no snickers. Maybe Milky Ways, though.
Sorry, bad joke. (Seriously, anyone snickers and I'm taking 'em down.) Take a deep breath, accept what they can offer you and what they can't. It is what it is.
There are no bigger fights in my family than when my Modern Orthodox sister and my Conservative Rabbi sister fight over Halacha. Oy. Makes me want to eat a cheeseburger. Or some shrimp. Sigh, I miss shrimp.
Wait, this wasn't about me...
Hooray for your father and your husband's brother. And for those who attend the ceremony even if they don't take honors.
i dont reeally understand this, and i am not sure i should comment, but from my very simple view... i feel really sorry for your son. he seems to be such an amazing young man, and he is the one being "punished."
im not sure god would be so judgemental of a young person who seems very conscious of others, including those less fortunate. i would think he would be proud of this young man.
LT, you bring tears to my eyes. I have met J, and I agree with you. He's a fabulous kid.
Kudos to his grandfather and his uncle for bending a little to honor him.
LT, I think you are understanding perfectly well. For better or worse, my son is accustomed to the religious differences and said he didn't expect any different. Having been brought up in our community, he is so proud of it. He doesn't waste time concerning himself with how others feel about us. That's something that I need to work on.
This is really unfortunate, but not really so surprising. The first time I encountered this kind of bigotry was in high school when a female classmate approached the rabbi after class and asked about attending her cousin's bar mitzvah who was Conservative. The rabbi emphatically said she was forbidden to go and that regardless of whatever fights it causes with her family or parents she must stand for her principles. I remember thinking that this rabbi claimed to be representing an Orthodoxy that was completely alien to me. What family only has Orthodox members? Maybe that rabbi is the only one. Everyone I know has more and less observant members and members affiliated or unaffiliated with various branches of Judaism. It's such a narrow-minded and haughty way of viewing the world - it's essentially saying, "Only I have value; only I am right."
This kind of political nonsense is so frustrating to me. Isn't it enough that we're maybe 13 million people worldwide out of around 7 billion people? That's not even .2% of the world. Do we really need to further subdivide ourselves? It's just so pathetic. Here's a group of maybe 1.5 million people refusing to associate with the other 11.5 million. How much more ridiculous can you get?
A little more than 60 years ago the Nazis killed anyone with even a percentage of Jewish blood. The lesson we took away from that apparently is that it's okay for non-Orthodox Jews to be killed with Orthodox Jews, but it's not okay for them to LIVE with Orthodox Jews.
I lost a lot of my family in the Holocaust and the family I still have is very precious to me. I couldn't care if they believed in the Flying Spaghetti Monster - family comes first. You find a way to make things work. You find that wiggle room. You find the leniencies.
I'm sorry things aren't working out 100%, but cherish what is working out and who is celebrating with you and your family. It's going to be a wonderful day and they're the ones who will be missing out, not you.
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