The Bar Mitzvah that Felt Like a Shiva

 Zachary’s family had hoped to celebrate his bar mitzvah in Israel. Instead, they opted to host local and out-of-town guests in their hometown of Atlanta in July. I had worked with Zachary over Zoom to prepare for his bar mitzvah and was getting ready to travel to Atlanta to officiate his service when I received an email from his mom.

She wrote that Zachary’s uncle (her ex-husband’s brother-in-law) had been visiting his brother in Miami the prior week. They were home at his condo in Surfside when the building collapsed. Both men were unaccounted for and presumed dead.

She said the bar mitzvah would go on as planned, albeit with a very different mood.

I called her right away and offered my deepest sympathies for what the entire family must have been going through at that time. I knew that this would no longer be just another bar mitzvah that I would officiate. I suspected that I would now be called upon in a pastoral role to offer comfort and to try to help the grieving family that had not yet received confirmation of their loved one's death.

Surfside Miami Florida Condo Collapse 2021 (ABC News)

Mitzvah Tools: Virtual Learning for Bar and Bat Mitzvah Students

Scrolling through my Facebook feed a few weeks ago, I noticed that the young woman whose bat mitzvah I officiated just weeks after being ordained as a rabbi a dozen years ago had walked down the aisle as a bride. That, combined with the realization that my oldest child will become a bar mitzvah early next year, caused me to feel nostalgic and also to consider how the bar and bat mitzvah training process has changed over the years.

While the bar mitzvah ceremony is a relatively new institution in Judaism, it hasn’t changed much in terms of what the bar mitzvah boy or bat mitzvah girl actually does in the synagogue service. Of course, the ceremony differs from synagogue to synagogue, and what a girl is allowed to do for her bat mitzvah ceremony varies in Orthodox congregations and in some Conservative congregations.

What has certainly changed in recent years is how these Jewish teens are trained for their coming of age ceremony and how the synagogues handle the process. During my final year of rabbinical school I was serving a fledgling synagogue community in Northern Virginia while attending classes in New York City and living in News Jersey. The few b’nai mitzvah students I had to train that year met with me mostly over a speaker phone. I remember that when I had the opportunity to meet with these teens in person during one of my weekend visits to the congregation I realized how much of the important interaction I was missing because I couldn’t see their faces during our tutoring sessions. The technology to tutor them virtually through video conferencing was not yet available.

Today, many bar and bat mitvah tutors are training Jewish teens who live hundreds or even thousands of miles away thanks to the advent of such video conferencing apps as Skype, Google Hangouts, Zoom and Apple FaceTime. Even beyond these communication apps, there are other technological tools being used to allow for a more interactive bar mitzvah training experience. Many online tutors use the Trope Trainer application, a computer software that has lessons, blessings and full readings for students. There is no shortage of online options for the parents looking for virtual training for their child’s bar mitzvah preparations. In many cases, it is the family that is unaffiliated with a congregation that is looking to use technology for training. However, with busy extracurricular schedules for the teens and hectic work responsibilities for their parents, it is oftentimes easier for teens to be trained at home in front of a screen.

Advice for Rabbis Giving Advice to Bar and Bat Mitzvah Teens

The first time I officiated at a bar mitzvah was when I was the visiting rabbi at a young congregation in Virginia during my senior year of rabbinical school. I was a 27-year-old without children and not quite sure what to say to a 13-year-old Jewish teen. My wife was pregnant with our first child, and I was tirelessly trying to determine what advice I'd have for this yet-to-be-born child, let alone come up with some meaningful words of a wisdom for a teenager. I tried to channel what my own rabbi had said to countless bar mitzvah boys and bat mitzvah girls over the years as I sat in that congregation.

I don't recall exactly what I said to that young man in Virginia, but it was likely a trite bar mitzvah charge in which I said he's the future of the Jewish people, and I encouraged him to continue his Jewish education and the performance of God's mitzvot (commandments) as he walks humbly in God's presence... or something uber-rabbinic like that.

Rabbi Jason Miller giving words of advice to a bar mitzvah boy in January 2004

I reflected on that moment last week after seeing a question that came through one of the rabbi discussion groups to which I'm subscribed. A first-time congregational rabbi asked what other rabbis like to say when they have that special moment to speak personally to the bar or bat mitzvah toward the end of Shabbat services. Some rabbis chimed in that they try to focus on what a wonderful job the bat mitzvah did of preparing for the day and how well she performed. Other rabbis suggested praising the bar mitzvah for his mitzvah project and congratulating them for taking the time to perform this act of charity. These are all kind and meaningful sentiments to offer to these Jewish teens on the biggest day of their lives thus far, but the more I thought about it the more I considered that we rabbis should take a different approach to speaking to the bar and bat mitzvah teens who stand in front of us during what might be the most impressionable period in their lives.

High Tech Bar Mitzvah Prep in the 21st Century

In the Coen Brother’s movie “A Serious Man,” we see young Danny practicing his haftorah for his bar mitzvah by listening to the cantor’s rendition of it on his record player. That scene was undoubtedly sentimental for Jewish men of a certain age who prepared for their bar mitzvah by keying up the phonograph in their parents’ living room.

Bar Mitzvah preparation has come a long way since the days of the record album. In the 1980s and early 1990s cantors and bar/bat mitzvah tutors recorded their voices onto audio cassette tapes so their twelve-year-old students could walk around the house listening to the chanting on a Sony Walkman. In fact, I remember many nights falling asleep with my black foamy headphones on while I listened to the late Cantor Larry Vieder of Adat Shalom Synagogue repeating the Torah trope (cantilation notes) and the long haftorah for my bar mitzvah. The mid-1990s saw the transition from the audio tapes to music CDs when bar mitzvah tutors began hooking up microphones to the computer and recording the bar mitzvah portion onto blank CD-Roms.

In recent years we’ve seen bar and bat mitzvah students receiving the audio version of the haftorah and blessings they need to learn via email, a concept that anyone over the age of thirty would find amazing.

The way Jewish teens prepare for their bar or bat mitzvah has changed dramatically thanks to technological innovation. Not only has the audio format changed over the years, but so too has the way in which these young men and women are being tutored.