Bat Mitzvah Redo 2016

12 is a terrible age to have a bat mitzvah. I don't know if it's true for others, but when I was that age I felt like my skin didn't fit, I was uncomfortable in front of a group and I didn't have the slightest idea who I even was or how I fit into Judaism.

But now I'm an adult, and I feel so much better about myself, about being Jewish, about everything. Over the years I've followed my own path experimenting with becoming more and more committed, first through gravitating to very observant communities, and later by holding onto my observance but simultaneously discovering progressive and sometimes egalitarian communities in which I could actively become much more of a participant.

So a few years ago as I began to learn how to lein and lead services in my partnership minyan, Minyan Tiferet, I had the idea that maybe I would try again and have a bat mitzvah-type celebration. Doing this would give me an opportunity to actively and maturely demonstrate my relationship to Judaism and to the community by doing the sorts of rituals that are normally done in a bar or bat mitzvah service.

So around October of last year I finally began learning to lein this past week's parsha Be'ha'ah'lotkha.
It is not easy. Many of the words are hard to pronounce, it's not short and I am a slow learner. So by this past Shabbat I had prepared a drash, 4 aliyot and the Haftorah.

At Tiferet we always do the drash before Torah reading. I spoke about the cloud and fire that led the Jews through the desert. Without sources to back me, I took a leap and compared the fire to passion with which we experience when we do something bold in Judaism. There was fire in the bush when Hashem first spoke to Moshe. Fire-like activities are when we stand up for what we believe, or when a non-Jew converts to Judaism or any other passionate brave activities that keep Judaism (and our lives) aflame. I spoke about the cloud as being more Judaism maintenance... showing up to shul, keeping Shabbat, getting our kids off to school and any other routine things we do.

I spoke about a class I took at Oberlin College on Christian Utopian communities. In that class I was fascinated to learn about Anabaptists. Baptists always baptized children at birth, instantly including them in the community from birth. Anabaptists, though believed that being faithful was more meaningful if you chose it voluntarily. I compared the practice of baptizing routinely as being like the life of a cloud and the act of choosing voluntarily as being a fire-like gesture.

Finally I shared how the cloud and fire could be one and the same. That same spring when I took the class I had two experiences that helped me reflect more on my own practice. First, I went to the professor to ask for an extension on a paper.

"I have to clean out my room and my co-op of leaven, help plan a seder for Hillel and then I'm going to have 4 days where I'm not allowed to use my computer. I'm not going to be able to get any work done!"

The professor, a student of monasticism looked at me jealously and said,

"You'll be doing another kind of work. You can have the extension."

Later I spoke to my Rabbi back home, Michael Tayvah (may he rest in peace). Once again I complained of all I had to do.

"No you don't," he said. I was aghast. A rabbi telling me I didn't have to do these things? "You don't have to do any of them. This is a choice."

Those four words changed my life. I always thought Judaism was about all these things you have to do. And it's true, the Torah does ask and even demand of us to do all sorts of things. However, everything in life is a choice. Getting up in the morning is a very very very good choice that we make --it's even the right choice -- but if we see it as a choice, it is so much more empowering as thinking it's been forced on us. It's when we choose that we bring passion to what we would have been doing anyway.

I can't say I leined perfectly, but I got as close to it as I possibly could. I did it loud and clear as I've watched Evan (the founder of Tiferet) do time and time again. My mind felt like it was running through a groove in an old record, recalling all the passages I've been practicing all these months.

I didn't do aliyot 5-7. These were too much for me to learn, so I gave them to Akiva Roth, the teacher who has been helping me through all this, and two a 14-year old girl named Maya who is, in my mind, a leining prodigy. As I said in my thank yous at the end, I used to be jealous of prodigies but now I'm adult enough to be impressed of and proud of what she can do.

Another thing I had taken on with all this was learning Haftorah for my very first time. This meant that I would be called for an aliyah at maftir. Noam Ohring, a wonderful cantor who is part of my minyan, surprised and delighted me when he called me up with the melody of a bat mitzvah being honored. Then I sprang my surprise, which was that ND would read Maftir, her very first leining appearance. Akiva explained the halakha of why it was appropriate for a 9 year old girl such as her to read Maftir (I can share that with you another time if you want). She did beautifully and made me so very very very proud.

So finally we were up to Haftorah which I had only started learning 2 weeks before. I read it, not perfectly, but more than good enough. When I got to the final brachot I took my deepest breath stood my tallest and belted them out as loud as I could. The room pummeled me with candy. (Naomi "scored" my hat.) Someone grabbed my hand, pulled me into another room and we danced.

It was a true true true simcha.

When I first planned to do this I did it for a number of reasons. One was that I wanted to do something bold for my 40th birthday. Another was that I wanted to claim my Judaism. Maybe another is that I wanted attention. I also hoped to help the minyan by giving them a good event that would bring in new people, and I wanted to maybe inspire people. There was always the fear though, that it would just look like an ego-centric act.

That's not at all what it was. The community made it their simcha. The love and energy in the room were far beyond what I ever imagined possible.

Thank you G-d for the inspiration and strength to do this, for the people that made it happen, for the chance to pass on this passion to my daughter.