Word: nai
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...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...
...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...
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...
...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...