As May approaches, I am reminded once again that I never had a B’nai Mitzvah, the Jewish coming of age ritual that celebrates transition from childhood to adulthood around age thirteen. Known as Bat Mitzvahs for girls and Bar Mitzvahs for boys, this milestone event typically occurs on the first Shabbat after reaching eligible age, hence my ceremony date on May 26, and preparations often begin years earlier.
Unlike my two older sisters, I never met with our rabbi to consider the significance of the Torah or Haftarah, nor did I learn to chant Hebrew with our cantor. I never enjoyed the embarrassing thrill of being lifted high into the air atop a chair as friends and family danced the traditional Horah around me.
Each spring, my long-gone Bat Mitzvah date tenderly passes like the haunting of a ghost, carrying a wealth of unrealized memories and enriching experiences. While I have since attended many ceremonies for friends and cousins, I am always overcome with a sense of regret for never having taken advantage of this opportunity, representing the culmination of years of hard work in Sunday school.
It is not that I was too nervous to speak in front of a large audience, even if it was mostly composed of loved ones and friends. From a young age, I have enjoyed public speaking. There was no hard work, hours of dedication or coaching involved to conquer self doubt. I could be addressing a dozen classmates or a thousand people, and there would be no detection of underlying nervousness in my voice or stance.
Rather, the reason for my lack of a ceremony (and celebration) was due to conflicting commitments. My diluted sense of Jewish identity meant that the importance of having a Bat Mitzvah and following tradition were overlooked. And I am not alone—many teenagers have found it difficult balancing their social life, academics and extracurriculars with culture and religion.
I often wonder, what could I have learned from having a Bat Mitzvah? Would I be a different person—perhaps more Jewish—today? Would I view the world differently, perhaps with more compassion, empathy or wisdom? While my family practices Reform Judaism, my ancestors were Orthodox. How deeply have we lost our sense of religious devotion—both culturally and internally?
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Having been raised in the South, I more often than not have been one of a handful of Jewish kids in school, and I have felt a noticeable lack of a Jewish community, at least compared to my parents, who grew up in a predominantly Jewish area in New Jersey. In elementary school, I remember bringing dreidels and gelt to school in December, as well as lighting a menorah for my Christian classmates to celebrate Hanukkah. In my U.S. History class this year, I answered basic questions about Judaism during a seminar on the Holocaust as the sole Jewish kid in the room.
Recently, one of my friends asked me about my race. While I have dark hair and pale skin, in many ways fitting the Jewish stereotype, people have said I do not look particularly Jewish. I have responded not that I am white, German, Eastern European or Russian, but plainly, Jewish. My friend was confused. Jewish? But that’s not your race—or is it? However, unlike other cultures in which religion is not necessarily tied to a specific place, Judaism is most commonly associated with a particular ethnicity.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg once noted that while she was not very Jewish in practice, she ardently observed core Jewish values. My family may only celebrate Hanukkah out of all the Jewish holidays and attend synagogue a handful of times each year, yet we are very Jewish culturally. Hard work and diligence have been ingrained in my sisters and I, and we value the importance of thoughtfulness and equality toward others.
To affirm my sense of Jewish identity, I have sought to engross myself in the culture. That has involved an obsession with Jewish genealogy, researching the history of Ancient Israel, poring over Jewish cuisine and attempting to speak Hebrew and Yiddish with an American accent. Even still, my yearning to become more Jewish has always gone unfulfilled due to other more pressing commitments.
In recent years, joining the Jewish bandwagon has become a trend. I know friends who have not a drop of Jewish blood who have become increasingly obsessed with the idea of it. While I am proud of my religion and ethnicity as an indelible aspect of my upbringing, I also deliberately hide my Jewishness from my Muslim friends, and I often try to blend in with groups of Christians. At times, I have even dismissed or pretended not to hear antisemitic remarks.
Looking to the future, I will happily continue eating matzoh ball soup and sufganiyot, even as I call into question my less tangible connections to Jewish culture. I may fall short of becoming a rabbi, but I hope that I’ll come to terms with my Jewishness in a way that does not mean making convenient excuses to miss social affairs by “celebrating” Jewish holidays, or only wanting to honor Shabbat to eat challah, and forge deeper connections to my culture and heritage.
Photo by Helen Katz/The ECHO
