The six rings

A few inaccuracies crept into my previous posting about the Bar Mitzva year, so I thought it best to correct them now.

Mitzva is more properly translated as "a deed which has been commanded", and Jewish law has (if I remember correctly) 613 'rules for living' or mitzvot (for example, all the rules of kosher food, saying prayers, etc). Bar is the Arama'ic word for 'son', and as I wrote earlier, the age of bar mitzva is the age when the rules of Judaism become incumbent upon the son.

Many years ago, a tradition began on my kibbutz to turn the religious bar mitzva ceremony into something more suitable for the young secular kibbutznik. In time, this tradition spread to other kibbutzim and even to towns. It's called (in rough translation) "The six rings".

Imagine six concentric circles. The innermost circle is labeled "myself"; after all, "I" am at the centre of things. The next circle is labeled 'my family'; this is the level nearest to myself which isn't myself. The next circle is labeled 'my society' or 'my class'; the next is 'my community'. Going further away, we have 'my country' and to end things up, we have 'my people'. These are the six rings of belonging to each person.

Along with each ring, there are tasks to be performed; one task is a mitzva, meaning in this context that it is compulsory, and one task is chosen by the children themselves. Of course, each task is relevant to each ring. So, in the 'myself' ring, the compulsory task is a self-portrait, and yesterday evening the children chose 'personal project' as their non-compulsory task. The self portrait is not necessarily a picture; it can be a mask or a collage, in which each child tells about himself. The 'personal project' is similar to a programme featured on British television years ago: "Jim'll fix it". For example, my son is enamoured with the Maccabi Haifa football club, so for him the task could be to go to Haifa and meet with the players.

The compulsory family task is to produce a family tree; this gets easier the more children there are in each family, as the work has already been done. I don't recall now all of the tasks which were chosen; if anyone really wants to know, then they can contact me.