Bar Mitzva

I imagine that most people reading this blog will know that Jewish boys aged thirteen have a bar mitzva, but they will probably know no more than that, including what 'bar mitzva' actually means. "Mitzva" is a good deed and "bar" in this context means "someone who has" or "someone who does". So whilst it can mean "someone who does good deeds", what it really means is that the young Jewish male has now reached an age where all the mitzvot - all the deeds designated in the Jewish faith - are now incumbent upon him. In other words, the young male has now become an adult.

In traditional Jewish communities, the bar mitzva celebration boils down to the celebrant reading from the Torah (bible) during a Saturday morning service; as the Torah reading is normally sung, this can be a nerve wracking experience from a young lad whose voice is changing on a daily basis. We live on a kibbutz, which is not a traditional Jewish community, so our take on the bar mitzva ceremony is somewhat different.

One of the major tenets of the kibbutz ideology is the focus on the group and not on the individual, a focus which I am very sad to say has been dissipating over the last thirty years, and especially in the past few years. Thus there is no 'bar mitzva' ceremony per se, but rather the entire class of thirteen year olds participate in a year long programme in which they learn about themselves, their families, their community, their country and their world (the five rings), as well as performing tasks for the community (it used to be thirteen, but the number has dwindled to about eight).

We kicked off the bar mitzva year last night for the fifteen children in my son's class with a short ceremony in the hills (where each child signs his name on a declaration of intent and receives his group's tee-shirt) and a bonfire. Until a few weeks ago, the group didn't have a name, but in a preparatory meeting which they had, the name "Ofer" (gazelle) was chosen. Surprisingly I found it hard to find pictures of gazelles on the Internet for their tee-shirt design, and in the end I was forced to use a picture of Faline from "Bambi".

As both my wife and I come from religious backgrounds (hers much more than mine), we will be having a traditional bar mitzva ceremony for our son in a few weeks. But as her family won't travel on a Saturday, we're having the ceremony in the middle of the week, which will make it much easier for Nir, our son, as he will only have a small portion to read from the Torah. It's up to each family with a son to decide whether they want to have such a ceremony, and not all do so.

On Tuesday night, we're having the 'five rings evening' in which the whole concept will be explained to the children. Also that evening they will chose which tasks they wish to perform; in previous years these have included useful things such as learning first aid and helping old people, along with educational items such as visiting the Diaspora and Holocaust museums, and walking from the kibbutz to Jerusalem. Then there is the show which the kids put on at the end of the year and marks the formal end to one of the most important years of their life.