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by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar
One of the opportunities we have when celebrating a young person in our community becoming Bar Mitzvah is to reflect on: what are the core lessons one is tasked with learning when making the transition, when traveling through the passageway, from childhood to adulthood? We all, all Jews, automatically become Bar or Bat Mitzvah when we reach age 13 and we travel on to adulthood, but the question is: did we learn what we were supposed to learn in so becoming?
When I say this, I do not mean, “did we all learn how to chant Torah and Haftarah and to say the proper blessings?” Although, that is not unrelated to what I do mean.
As I did on Yom Kippur, I borrow from the teachings of the influential German-American Jewish psychoanalyst, Erik Erikson, who formulated the teachings of developmental psychology that each phase of life brings with it tasks we are called upon to fulfill, two of which are relevant to becoming Bar Mitzvah.
In one phase, ages say, six to twelve, our task — really the task of our teachers and our caregivers and our loved ones, too — is to ensure that we know what we are capable of, that we believe in ourselves. And this is where Torah and Haftarah trope do indeed come in. One task we have for this youthful stage of our life is to ensure we have come to believe in our capacity to contribute to the world in the ways we want to contribute, to ensure that we know that we have the means and ability to bring to fruition what we want to do.
The B’nei Mitzvah celebration places a capstone on this experience of youth by nudging the young members of our community onto our Bimah so they can prove to themselves just how much they are capable of — chanting thousands-year-old words and melodies in front of a kahal, a community, of peers and adults. It helps cement for them their belief in themselves, and witnessing them take this on should remind us that we, too, are capable of contributing in the ways we want to.
The next phase, adolescence, comes right on its heels, and here the task is not about learning what we are capable of, but who we are; identifying the essence of who we are — our beliefs, our values, our ideals, bringing them out into the real world. Here, too, the B’nei Mitzvah experience is formative. If done right, in preparing for the Bar or Bat Mitzvah, we’ve immersed ourselves in a storehouse of sacred Jewish wisdom which can help us form values and believe in ourselves.
For example, each morning, we pray “Elohai neshamah shenatata bi tehorah,” my God, the soul you have given to me is pure. There is reason, upon coming out of my Bar Mitzvah, to believe in myself and what I am capable of, and to not be overly reliant on others for my sense of self worth.
In fact, Jewish scholar Aviva Zornberg cites the Hasidic Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, who cites the Talmud, which cites the Psalms, for this very teaching.
Psalm 146 says “ahalelah Adonai b’hayai,” I will praise God with my life. With my life, these rabbis and scholars emphasize. Not other people’s lives. With my life. With my belief in my own authentic self.
Channeling Rebbe Nachman and the sages of the Talmud, Zornberg writes, “When one is needy of others’ approval, one does not live from the sources of one’s own life. Such a person’s life is not life, say the Sages — not authentic life. Only one who has freed himself of such needs can truly pray to God: ‘I shall praise God with my life.’”
What we should seek, they suggest, “is the simple expression of the integrated self. At its truest, that is what the human face represents — a forceful integration of the authentic self that can confront other selves, other faces, without fear or favor.”
Now, if you’ve managed to learn that by today, let alone by age 13 — kol hakavod to you. This kind of wisdom and integrity can be a lifelong pursuit, as it is for me in trying to reconcile myself to these teachings.
Still, the more we can instill these teachings in our young people, that they should believe in themselves — in their capabilities, and in the essence of who they are, in the goodness of the souls that lie within them — the better our world may be.
On this theme, there is the famous story of Reb Zusha of Anipoli:
Reb Zusha was lying on his deathbed surrounded by his disciples. He was crying, and no one could comfort him. When asked why, he explained. “When I come to Heaven, and they ask me, ‘Why weren’t you like Abraham our forefather?’ I will answer: ‘Because I wasn’t Abraham.’ If they inquire: ‘Why didn’t you match the greatness of Moses?’ I can answer that I wasn’t Moses. Even if they try to compare me to my brother Reb Elimelech, I can still say that I wasn’t Elimelech. However, if they ask me why I wasn’t the way Zusha needed to be… to that I have no answer.”
It may be only Zev that is celebrating becoming Bar Mitzvah this Shabbat, and yet we’re all invited to reengage with the teachings each B’nei Mitzvah student is asked to master: belief in what we can do, belief in who we are, and integrating it all together.
