I should have known that the one subject that could shake me from my blogging torpor was not Israel, war, the Reform Movement or anything other than... Bar Mitzvahs. Perhaps I see through new eyes because my own child is less than six months from his bar mitzvah and now attending his peers' services and parties regularly. Maybe it's because my recent move has exposed to the subtleties of yet another communities' bar mitzvah mishegas. But whatever it is, I am now quite clear that there is much mishegas surrounding the bar mitzvah in our community. I am not, of course the first to conclude as much. My esteemed senior colleagues have tried to put God on the guest on guest list and railed against the "idolatry" of today's bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies.
But just because others identified the problem years ago doesn't mean it isn't real. It is. I'll offer a few observations over the next few entries about this. The problem became clear to me in the fall. Within a few weeks I had spoken with two mothers, both during the reception and weeks after their child's bar/bat mitzvah ceremony and party. In both settings these mothers remarked that they were disappointed and underwhelmed by the experience. There was even a hint of resentment in both. At the end of it all, they were proud of their children but feelings that they (the mothers) had done too much with too little (if any) "payoff." I would not have expected either mother to feel this way. Neither was a "drop off" or otherwise disengaged parent. Both families were fairly well engaged in the temple and jewish living. But both found the whole experience anticlimactic. Something IS wrong with this picture and we should fix it.
