Last Saturday morning, I attended the bat mitzah, the coming-of-age ceremony, of a friend from French class. Daryl, the friend, is eighty-eight years old. Her friend Ellen, also a grandmother, had her bat mitzvah at the Shabbat service, too.
Shortly after the service began—in Hebrew—I was pleased to hear familiar words. Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melech ha’olam: Blessed are You, LORD our God, King of the universe. The words create in me a sense of belonging, of being in community. My husband and I were, for many years, members of a Christian congregation that shares a building with a reform Jewish temple. The sanctuary in that building can be configured for either Christian or Jewish worship. It’s always one or the other, except on Thanksgiving Eve, when the congregations hold a joint service. There is also an annual pulpit exchange, when the priest speaks at the Shabbat service and the rabbi speaks on Sunday morning.
The arrangement led to warm relations between the congregations. We considered Bob our rabbi, and the temple regarded Doug as their priest. Over the years, we heard our friends say and sing, Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melech ha’olam, so many times that the words feel welcoming to me. They fill me and wash over me like a hymn.
Unfortunately, those words make up the entirety of the Hebrew I understood last Saturday, and the whole hours-long service was in Hebrew. While, in theory, you can follow the service in the prayer book, which is in both Hebrew and English, the order of worship doesn’t go straight from point A to point B. It wanders around. And the prayer book has very few transliterated passages. This means that you can’t watch the Hebrew words flow past as they’re spoken, or even satisfy yourself that you’re meditating on the same material the Hebrew is covering. It’s hard to feel like a participant when you don’t understand the language.
On the other hand, an explanatory booklet in the pew said that, simply by being there, everyone who attends is part of the service. Whatever sound you make, your very breathing, becomes part of the experience of worship. How’s that for a statement of inclusivity?
One aspect of the service was easy to understand, in any language. When the Torah was removed from the ark, and when it was returned, it was paraded throughout the sanctuary, where the congregation greeted it with joy. What a wonderful response to the word of God.
Also easy to understand was how difficult Hebrew must be to master. It sounds to my ears like an ancient form of song. In preparation for their bat mitzvahs, Daryl and Ellen had to learn not just the words of Hebrew, but the tonality of the words. The passages the women read aloud to the congregation were thoroughdemonstrations of skill.
In addition to the readings from Torah and the teachings of the prophets, the bat mitzvah ceremony includes a discussion of those readings. Daryl and Ellen shone here. They’re both academics, accustomed to speaking in front of groups of people. Their discussions were well reasoned, thoroughly researched, and insightful. They actually shed light on the contents. Daryl’s talk was even funny. There’s a world of difference—a lifetime of difference—between a twelve- or thirteen-year-old’s reflections on a reading and Daryl and Ellen’s reflections.
Also striking was the degree of participation in the bat mitzvah ceremony on the part of Daryl and Ellen’s families and one close friend. The women were surrounded by love during their rite of passage. The bat mitzvah strengthened their connections with those who have made this journey before them–those in that beautiful, sunny sanctuary with them Saturday morning and those who have studied and worshipped in this way around the world and down the millennia.
We outsiders were surprised near the end of the service, when ushers came around with handfuls of large, individually wrapped gumdrops and distributed the candy to everyone in the pews. After all this time, a light snack? Nope. The candy was to throw toward Daryl and Ellen. Showering them sweetness in this new phase of their lives? No instruction or explanation came with the colorful candy, but tossing it was fun and a great visual.
What was clear throughout the service and the reception with “light lunch” (groaning tables of food) was how loved Daryl and Ellen are, not just by friends and relations, but by the whole congregation. Everyone was delighted for the new “daughters of the commandment,” the new bat mitzvahs. They did us a mitzvah—a good deed—by inviting us to witness this ritual.
3 March 2023