Everything was going wrong. First, her best friend moved. Not just to another town, she moved to another state.
Also, she was starting a new school this year. Middle school was scary to think about, though she would never admit it out loud. She was too cool for that.
And now her parents were talking about moving to another town, with a better school district. She, of course, saw nothing wrong with this one. And what was worse, they would probably move after she had become used to the new middle school.
OK, now add to all of this: her bat mitzvah.
"I don’t want a bat mitzvah," she told her parents. "It’s just for you and your relatives. You don’t even need me there. So why don’t you just throw your own party?"
"Don’t be silly," they answered. "This is for you, it’s about you."
So how come no one would listen to her?
Lessons with the cantor were OK, but then the cantor is a cool guy. He never lies, never says you did a good job when you know you stank.
But what goes over well in the cantor’s study isn’t likely to go over well in front of a whole mess of people.
"I’ll be a bat mitzvah automatically at 12 anyway," she said. "Why do we need the fancy ceremony?"
"We’ll keep it simple."
"Why can’t we just go to Israel for my bat mitzvah?" she asked.
"Would you like that? We could have the ceremony on Masada."
"Oh," she responded. "I thought we would just go and, y’know, kinda sightsee."
"That’s not what this is about," they answered.
"Then what is it about?" she replied.
"If you don’t know that, you’ve wasted all your years in Hebrew school."
Well, no duh! She had slept through most of it.
She asked the cantor, "So what is it all about?"
"L’dor v’dor," he said.
From generation to generation?
"Tov me’od," he said. Very good.
From generation to generation. From your parents generation to yours. From your grandparents to your parents. From your great-grandparents to your grandparents. All the way back, and all the way forward.
Throughout history, as long as there are Jews on earth, we will all be connected through things like the bar or bat mitzvah, Shabbat, brit milah, lighting candles, fasting on Yom Kippur, eating matzah and retelling the Passover story.
Sharing the stories of our ancestors with our children, as you will do someday, God willing, with yours. That’s what it’s all about.
That’s why she liked the cantor. He answered her in words she could understand.
So she entered middle school, and did just fine. She studied her parshah and learned the prayers.
She thought about what the cantor had said, and pictured herself listening to her own son practice. She imagined her grandfather, now in his 70s, as he must have looked up on the bimah.
And then it was time.
She sat on the bimah, a demure young lady with ankles crossed and tissues in hand. She read her parshah, sang the blessings, led the service and gave a dvar Torah.
As she stood behind the pulpit, she looked into some of the faces in the sanctuary. And when she led the congregation in the prayer, "L’dor v’dor," she sang it with feeling.
She imagined the family members she had never met, going back generations. She thought about those who could not have a bar or bat mitzvah before they were sent to the concentration camps. She thought about those who would have one after her.
Then she looked at her younger brother sitting in the first row, with her parents.
"I wonder if he’ll feel the same way I did," she thought.
"Well, at least he’ll have me to help him."
