Mother of the Bat

A friend of mine called in a lather the other day, all het up about her daughter’s upcoming bat mitzvah.

"I can’t believe it," she said, her voice a good octave higher than usual, "there’s so much to think about. You have to find a place, decide on a menu, pick out flowers and favors and dishware and tablecloths and even tables — you’ve got to pick out tables! You have to know the diameter of the tables you’re going to have in order to choose tablecloths. It’s crazy. It’s too much for me."

"Calm down," I told her. "Everything will fall into place."

And then I thought back to my own experience as the mother of the bat mitzvah, which was followed soon thereafter by my experience as mother of the bar mitzvah, by which time I was seasoned, wiser and only slightly less frantic. There’s something about inviting a sizable number of people to an event, some of whom will be arriving from distant locales, and that "something" is that you want them to be happy they came. To this end, that first time around, there was a sign up in my office that read: "It’s the Bat Mitzvah, Stupid," lest I forget for even one waking moment that I had a two-pronged event to plan: a morning service followed by Kiddush and then a party in the evening.

My husband and I spent our courtship on the protest fields of Washington, D.C. Yet here we were, in the thick of planning what I am sure we once believed to be the most bourgeois enterprise imaginable: a "catered affair," entertainment that would cost thousands and be over in a matter of hours. How had we gotten ourselves into this?

"The meaning of the bar and bat mitzvah," our rabbi intoned at a special service geared toward anxious parents, "is that your child becomes a Jew in his or her own right. You have sent your child to Hebrew school for four years, he or she has attended with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and now, on this day, you give over the responsibility. You release your child to be an independent Jew, the son [bar] or daughter [bat] in charge of the mitzvot."

The truth is, our daughter’s level of enthusiasm for her Hebrew studies rarely wavered. Indeed, she had, from the beginning, chosen to go to Hebrew school, maintained an interest in learning the language, and downright bubbled over the questions of philosophy and social reality that came up in class as a result of the excellent teachers with whom she had the good fortune to study. She had been a bat mitzvah, a daughter of the commandments, from the get-go. And this made her coming-of-age a fitting commemoration of the work she’d put in, and the dedication she had so spiritedly demonstrated.

Of course when, at 8 years old and entering the fourth grade, she’d said that she would like to go to Hebrew school, a big party at the end of her tenure as student was the last thing on her mind. But now that the ritual of the celebration had made itself known to her, well, what self-respecting about-to-be-a-teenager wouldn’t want a party with lots of friends and rock ‘n’ roll?

"OK, so why not just turn up the music and make her a party?" many might wonder, ourselves included. We’d thought about ordering a couple of pizzas and letting the kids have their fun. Why worry about caterers and DJs and rented party rooms, tables and menus and centerpieces? Why spend all this money that a lot of people could really use?

"The ceremony of the bar and bat mitzvah is not an ancient rite," the rabbi told us at that same gathering of parents. "It can’t be found in any of the books of the Torah; in fact, it’s only about 500 years old." (Only a rabbi can make 500 years sound like a drop in the bucket.) "But sometime between the 14th and the 16th centuries, the concept of the bar mitzvah and the celebration that accompanies it took hold. Beginning in Germany and Poland, and readily accepted by Jews around the world, the age of 13 was adapted as the time when the child is not only obliged but allowed to participate as a member in full standing of the Jewish community."

And that’s why the pizza party wouldn’t do. Because, as the rabbi said, the celebration is central to the tradition. And it is a celebration, as I understood it, meant to be of, by and enjoyed with the community. Sure, our daughter could have a party with her friends, but that wasn’t the point. In fact, it would betray the point because that what is being celebrated in the context of the bat mitzvah is the arrival of a new member into the Jewish community. Not a community of teenagers, but a community of mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends. A community that does reach back to ancient times, even as representatives of its many generations gather at this time to welcome its newest trained, educated and committed member.

Let the kids dance? Sure. But let all of us, of many ages, rejoice as well at the triumph that the bat mitzvah party symbolizes — our continuity.

I’m of the generation that created the atmosphere in which Jewish daughters feel it is their right to share in this mere 500-year-old practice. The generation that fought for civil rights, rebelled against everything our parents taught us and then returned to a good deal of it. Still questioning, probing and, yes, justifying. I ask myself how many more mouths could be fed, and how much hope made a little bit more possible were I to chuck the catered affair and send the money to those in need. But then I came back to my daughter, and the profound weight of her decision to study. It’s a mere drop in the bucket that created enough of a splash to ripple indefinitely into the past that is her heritage, and the future her decision will help create.

So, yes, we made a splash, too. And I continued to question the political correctness of it, worry over the details of it, and break into an intense fit of angst when I realized I still hadn’t decided on the menu. For, as my grandmother taught me well: If you invite people to join you in celebration, "You’ve got to give them what to eat.

Elyce Wakerman teaches composition at CSUN and is the author of “Father Loss: Daughters Discuss the Man That Got Away” (Henry Holt, 1987). She is currently working on a book about the year her daughter left for college.