<div dir="ltr">On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 8:39 PM, Ira Tick <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:itick1986@gmail.com">itick1986@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div dir="ltr">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.</div>
</blockquote><div><br>That does not explain why a bar mitzvah is a seudas mitzvah, whereas any other occasion is not. If I want, I can make my 23rd birthday part "to celebrate the good that has been done for [me] and for the Jewish people," but that doesn't make it a seudas mitzvah. <br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div dir="ltr">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.</div>
</blockquote><div><br>I think you have it reversed. Because bar mitzvah is made into such a big thing, the kids view it as an end, rather than as a beginning. They don't glorify it because it's the end, rather it's viewed as the end because they glorify it so much. Lately, efforts have been made to remind the kids that a bar mitzvah is only the beginning, but those are efforts to stem the tide, not the original form.<br>
<br>KT,<br>Michael<br> </div></div></div>