[Avodah] bat mitzva "bo bayom"

[Ira Tick]

It really does not matter whether or not the transition to adulthood is
something to celebrate.  A seudas mitzvah is specifically to honor one's
accomplishments and one's significant choices and to celebrate the good that
has been done for the person and for the Jewish people.  A bar or bat
mitzvah has yet to accomplish anything other than become old enough to start
making choices and searching for the opportunity for achievement.  As was
said before, celebration by itself is more like a seudas hodaah, or simply a
happy occasion.

Reform and Conservative Jews in America glorify the bar mitzvah because the
children are practically expected to abandon religion at the age when their
parents can no longer force it on them, so a big deal is made of the
"committment" of the children to accept communal and religious
responsibility for the future, even after they leave the Hebrew School...
That's probably how the custom of children reading the Torah for their bar
mitzvah became popular.

Perhaps this is why even we Orthodox borrow this practice, because its
always worth impressing upon our kids the importance of accepting
responsibility of Torah willingly and yet with a sense of duty, so that bar
mitzvah is about personal pride and committment, and not just about being
liable for punishment and having to run the gauntet of adolescence.

Many bar mitvah boys complete sedarim of mishnayos for their bar mitvah or
something similar as well.  Many young ladies prepare explanations of the
parsha or share insights about their favorite Biblical heroine or Torah
passage pertaining to women, etc (hopefully not their parent or teacher's
insights--we should encourage kids to do some original thinking for their
bar/bat mitzvah.  Probably then it is a seudas mitzvah...
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20080916/01b1c9c9/attachment-0001.htm>