May 15, 2015

As Jerry Seinfeld famously pointed out, studies show that people’s No. 1 fear is public speaking. Death is second. 

“This means to the average person, if you have to go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy,” the lauded comic once remarked.

This joke touches on something very real for many of us. Why are we more afraid of public speaking than we are of the grave? And why, year after year, do we continue to throw fresh-faced teens into the lion’s den that is delivering a dvar Torah on their bar or bat mitzvah day?

To Dexter Frank, an effervescent 11-year-old with freshly bleached hair, a speech in front of an entire congregation sounds more like waterboarding than a rite of passage steeped in tradition. 

“It sounds like torture,” Dexter told the Journal, his own bar mitzvah at Temple Israel of Hollywood about a year and a half away. “I wish the speech could be in front of three people, not 300.” 

Recalling her own visceral terror at her 2002 bat mitzvah at Temple Isaiah, public speaking coach Chiara Greene can certainly relate, but she also knows how mastering the art of public speaking can help teens throughout their lives. 

“I know, for myself, that fear is rooted in how you feel about yourself,” she said. “It can be specific to something like giving a speech, or broad and can hold you back in a job interview or college admission interview later in life.”  

She has launched a service, called Rock the Bimah (rockthebimah.com), to help youngsters deliver a dvar Torah with confidence. “I want kids to get over the fear so they can actually enjoy the service,” she said.

Greene said she also works with clients on their ability to captivate an audience with compelling storytelling. 

“Throughout history, great storytellers speak in present tense. It creates the world as if it’s happening and you become involved in it, sucking you in,” she said. “It’s not something we’re taught in school.”

Not all teens dread speaking to a crowd, of course. Chaz Frank, Dexter’s twin brother, said he doesn’t share his brother’s trepidation. 

“I don’t care. I’ll get up and speak in front of anyone,” Chaz said. There was no fear in his eyes at the prospect of speaking to a standing-room-only audience packed with peers, elders, strangers and (as brother Dex pointed out) a large extended family. 

“I’m really not afraid,” he insisted. “I’m just really looking forward to the party at the end of it.” 

And who can fault him? Bar mitzvah parties are often an extravagant reward for all the hard work that precedes them. But the hard work is a reward, too. And when that work is undertaken with a supportive tutor, cantor or rabbi, even teens who quiver in anticipation can find their bearings and leave their jitters behind. 

“My philosophy is that the rabbi should work directly with the kids on the speech,” Rabbi Jon Hanish of Kol Tikvah in Woodland Hills said. “So often we’re talking from the bimah and sending out newsletters. This is a rare chance to connect one on one.”

A graduate of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, Hanish works with b’nai mitzvah students to evoke realism in their performance and allow them to be themselves. 

“I want them to write and speak in 13-year-old voices. I’m not worried about them giving the world’s greatest presentation. I’m worried about them being who they are and presenting who they are to the community,” Hanish said.  

Finding one’s authentic voice to present to the congregation is critical. For 13-year-old Donovan Greenberg, one of Hanish’s pupils, that part of the process began with a question.

“It started with him asking me what I thought it meant to believe in God,” Donovan, who celebrated his bar mitzvah April 18, said. “It was really enjoyable talking openly about things like that with the rabbi. He never challenged what I believed. He never said I was wrong, which made it easy and really fun.” 

At the outset, Donovan wasn’t necessarily dreading his speech. His focus was on his Torah portion and making sense of it. Parashat Shemini makes mention of an alien fire offered by two sons of Aaron and how they are subsequently consumed in a fire that came forth from God. Hanish drew on his film background and sparked a discussion with the help of Steven Spielberg. 

“The rabbi showed me a clip of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ the part where the Nazis open the Ark and the fire comes out. That was actually based on my portion. It made me look at the movie and my portion in a different way. Things like that multiplied my interest a million times over,” Donovan said, recounting the experience excitedly over the phone. 

As for the particulars of delivering the speech on the big day, Donovan kept it simple, following the advice of Hanish. “He told me to tell the congregation about my Torah portion like I was just explaining it to a friend. That helped me a lot. In the end, it felt like just talking to my dad about my Torah portion,” Donovan said. 

Paul Greenberg, Donovan’s father, applauded Hanish for allowing his son to find his own answers to central questions raised in the portion’s text. 

“The rabbi never spoke down to him. He worked to find out Donovan’s true opinion on things,” he said. “The rabbi constantly … made him question things and didn’t just give him answers. It allowed Donovan to come up with his own answers. They were truly Donovan’s words.”

Rabbi Rebecca Rosenthal of IKAR in West L.A. emphasized preparation when she spoke to the Journal about her work with her b’nai mitzvah students. 

“The process for us starts when they’re younger, looking at the text and asking questions. ‘Why did this happen? How does it relate to my life?’ We want them thinking about the Torah and how it applies to them early on,” Rosenthal said. 

IKAR students give a mini dvar Torah in front of their peers in sixth grade, a year before they have to do the real thing in front of the entire congregation. It serves as a taste of what’s to come. The following year, some four months before the service, Rosenthal gives her students their parshah and tasks them with formulating questions on the material. Meetings over the next few months involve examining rabbinic commentary and engaging in open dialogue about their questions, the goal for the students being to apply the meaning of the text to their own lives. 

“If the portion is about gossip, maybe they’ve been the victim of bullying in secular school and can connect on that level. For the most part, kids of this age aren’t asked to think in this way about the Torah,” Rosenthal said. “They don’t necessarily believe us when we tell them they can put themselves in the text.”

For the speechwriting, Rosenthal provides a basic structure: introduction; question; recite Torah; cite text study; one’s own interpretation; then a challenge or call to action to the community. Rosenthal made it clear that kids often deviate from this structure, making the process a very individualized one. The structure exists merely to give a foundation. The onus is on the student to prepare, study, put in the work and find his or her connection to the text. 

Rosenthal said the approach is invaluable, sometimes in unexpected ways. “I had one student who was adamant that she wouldn’t perform a speech. I told her she didn’t have to, but that she was required to go through the learning process. Afterwards, she felt such a sense of ownership over her ideas that she couldn’t imagine not getting up in front of everyone and sharing,” Rosenthal said.

“Every kid is so different, and every kid has something so remarkable to say.”