Bar Mitzvah, a History by Michael Hilton

Author:Michael Hilton [Rabbi Michael Hilton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion
ISBN: 9780827609471
Publisher: The Jewish Publication Society
Published: 2014-04-02T15:31:31+00:00

In the 1980s the United Synagogue oral test was replaced by a written bar mitzvah test with two levels, basic and advanced; those who passed the more advanced level had their names published in the Jewish press. But the advanced test did not last, and over the years more and more individual synagogues dropped out of the system altogether. In January 2007 a written test was introduced, held three times a year, for girls wishing to celebrate bat mitzvah.77

Unlike the original seventeenth-century tests, modern bar mitzvah tests have included questions on a wide range of topics, not just those necessary for the boy’s entry into the ritual life of the community. Teaching syllabuses, gift books, coffee table books, and pamphlets all proclaimed the message that the boy is a living chain in the tradition and therefore needs to know as much as he can of those traditions. The Bar Mitzvah Book (1975) contains a variety of inspiring essays on episodes from Jewish history and proclaims on the dust jacket: “The book presents the outstanding aspects of the Jewish faith and the highlights of Jewish history in a manner that will appeal to the young Jewish adolescent of today, inspiring him with a sense of belonging to a community and to a living tradition.”78

Helen Leneman’s Bar Bat Mitzvah Education (1993) provides a wide range of programs suitable for American Jews. Leneman’s own curriculum for the year was based around the topics of prayer, Torah, and Jewish festivals; other programs gave more emphasis to charity projects or Jewish history. One contributor to the book expressed the view that “Bar/Bat Mitzvah is the bane of Jewish education. It is the tail that wags the dog, the lens through which a youngster’s entire Jewish schooling is viewed.” Because the hope of a successful event brings parents to the doors of the synagogue or Jewish school, it is up to communities, it was argued, to set the ground rules and devise the most comprehensive program possible.79

The published syllabus of the United Synagogue London from 1994 was based around factual knowledge and included sections on Jewish values and Zionist history in the written test and on the Jewish year, the principal festivals, and prayers in the oral test.80 And a law of the Chabad Hasidim published in a 1999 anthology asserts, “It is far better that the Bar Mitzvah boy should spend the months of preparation for his Bar Mitzvah learning Halachah (rules of behavior) that is needed on a day-to-day basis, than to spend a large amount of time learning to read his Sedrah.”81 The argument is that in previous generations, when boys were engaged most of the day in learning Torah, preparing to read from the Torah was done outside of their learning schedule in order not to take valuable time away from other studies. Nowadays, learning to read from the Torah has become the main part of the preparation, and that has to be changed.

Bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah are more popular today than they have ever been.

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