Oppenheimer Searches for Religious Spirituality

John Harvard might take offense at the suggestion that he only became a man in February of 2003, when Hillel sponsored his first bar mitzvah. Although the ceremony traditionally marks a young man or woman’s entry into Jewish adulthood—the bar mitzvah is the service held for 13-year-old boys, the bat mitzvah the equivalent for girls—it may not have held much religious meaning for the then-396-year-old John Harvard. For Hillel celebrants, the highlight of John Harvard’s bar mitzvah—now an annual event—is the party. Attendees say it was reminiscent of their middle-school years.

According to Mark Oppenheimer, author of “Thirteen and a Day: The Bar and Bat Mitzvah Across America,” John Harvard’s bar mitzvah is not the only ceremony that focuses on the ensuing party. In fact, disappointed by the lack of religious meaning he finds in the b’nai mitzvah he attends close to home in the New York area, Oppenheimer traverses the country in search of more traditionally religious ceremonies.

Oppenheimer’s Jewish travels begin in New York, where he attends bar and bat mitzvah services at Westchester Reform Temple in suburban Scarsdale, B’nai Jeshurun on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and Emanu-El on the East Side—and sneaks into the subsequent parties. He finds that the potential religious significance of the ceremonies is lost as rabbis and cantors focus on educating a mostly non-Jewish audience about the service itself. As Oppenheimer, who is currently editor of the New Haven Advocate, writes of the Westchester synagogue: “This temple, if not quite one of the bar mitzvah ‘factories’ that all rabbis accuse the other shul in town of being, was still a bit too mechanized. It was more Wal-Mart than family store, more state university than small college.”

And the extravagance of the bar and bat mitzvah parties bothers Oppenheimer even more than the rote nature of the synagogue services. He describes the party motivators, or dancers, who are paid by parents to enliven children’s b’nai mitvah. Many of the dancers are black, Hispanic, or Asian. And by participating in b’nai mitzvah celebrations, they “are selling an experience more ethnic than any that the children’s parents would allow them to experience for real.” Parents can also purchase tarot readers, large break-dancing wind puppets, or athletes who will play basketball with party guests.

Oppenheimer’s first stop in his attempt to escape the materialism of New York-area b’nai mitzvah is New Haven, Conn. At Beth El-Keser Israel (BEKI) synagogue, which is affiliated with the Conservative movement of Judaism, Oppenheimer attends the bat mitzvah of Annie Bass, an unusually religious young woman who attends a Jewish school and follows the Jewish custom of not working on the Sabbath. He is impressed by Annie’s bat mitzvah speech and by the fact that her interest in religion has also drawn her parents to Judaism. To Oppenheimer, “her bat mitzvah was the antidote to Scarsdale. For all these Jews who had joined BEKI because it was low-key and haimish, not materialistic or trendy, she was proof that their community could raise a different kind of Jew.”

Oppenheimer learns more about the religious potential of the bar and bat mitzvah when he visits Judi Gannon, a Torah tutor in Tampa, Florida. For Judi, learning the cantillation, or chanting, of the Torah brought her to teaching and saved her from severe depression. Judi said she hopes to pass on to her students some of the religious knowledge that’s been important to her.

The next stop on Oppenheimer’s b’nai mitzvah tour is further off the beaten path—Fayetteville, Arkansas, where Oppenheimer observes Jacob Newman’s bar mitzvah. With prayers led by Jacob’s mother, the bar mitzvah had a New Age feel, and a number of the attendees were not Jewish. In contrast to New York b’nai mitzvah, Oppenheimer says, the Fayateville bar mitzvah “is a natural opportunity for Jews to proclaim that they exist and to perform their existence in a way that the neighbors can see.”

Similarly, for Mendy Greenberg in Anchorage, Alaska, the bar mitzvah is a meaningful event. Mendy’s parents are members of the Lubavitcher Hasidic sect of Judaism, and they believe that part of their mission in life is to reach out to less observant Jews, a task that begins, for Mendy, on the day he becomes a bar mitzvah.

Oppenheimer’s journey concludes at Temple Sinai in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where his grandmother grew up. There, Oppenheimer witnesses the b’nai mitzvah of two adults, Jacob and Rena, who have converted to Judaism. Oppenheimer is puzzled by the survival of Judaism in Lake Charles, “the kind of town where Judaism lives but where Jewish rituals die.”

Oppenheimer’s visit to Lake Charles illustrates that his journey is a very personal one. Oppenheimer was born Jewish but never had a bar mitzvah ceremony. Through his travels, Oppenheimer comes to realize that he should not be disappointed by mechanical religious services or party-focused teenagers. He decides that b’nai mitzvah everywhere are a way for Jews—whether born or converted to the religion—to proclaim their places in the religious community.

Although writing “Thirteen and a Day” seems to have helped Oppenheimer deconstruct the bar mitzvah ritual, I did not find his conclusions profound, perhaps because the idea of the bat mitzvah as a way to proclaim cultural affiliation seems natural to me, based on my own experience. One hopes that Oppenheimer’s tour of unique b’nai mitzvah services and parties will generate an idea for some readers of what the bar and bat mitzvah mean to Jews in different locations and of different sects. For others, Oppenheimer’s journey, like the religious experiences he highlights, may be too individual to follow.

—Staff writer Sara E. Polsky can be reached at polsky@fas.harvard.edu.