Jewish Journey: Bar Mitzvah

June 9, 2009 at 8:41 pm (Jewish, mitzvot)
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Do you have to do a Bar Mitzvah when you convert? Why are you doing it now? That must have been a lot of work? Where did you find the time? Why did you decide to do it?

The rabbi asked my wife and she said that I would be interested. He asked me to join the class and how could I say no?

What does a Bar Mitzvah mean when you are 39? For me there were several things:

  • I had never had a Bar Mitzvah
  • I had never had the honor of reading from the Torah
  • I had never learned how to chant Trope
  • I had the opportunity to study with 7 other adults who came at this from all different directions
  • I had the opportunity to learn more

13 years being Jewish, it seemed so right to start studying for a Bar Mitzvah. I would be able to relearn the Hebrew aleph-bet so that I could read. I would learn the trope so that I could chant.

Learning trope was a challenge. I never thought about this much until the class. I have never heard myself sing. I never sing out loud. I have never learned a tune. I cannot even reproduce a tune to a song that I have heard for 20 years. It isn’t that I am tone deaf it is more that I have no musical memory. So how do you learn how to chant if you cannot remember the tune 5 minutes later. It was work. I first transcribed the notes as dots over each letter in the word. That told me where to go up and down. But I lost all of the cadence and emphasis. So I made some dots darker and bigger for emphasis. Now I could go up and down with emphsis. Yay.

The only problem is how do you take a two syllable word and go up and down seven times.  So I had to draw the word out in latin characters so that something like b’shayla became b’shay la hahaha ha haah. Now I can see the direction, the emphasis and the syllable stretch. That is what I memorized; Hebrew marked with vowels, trope, dots, and transliterations. A Russian friend who lived in Israel for 7 years could not read a thing.

While I was practicing and listening to my portion over and over I also started on my Drash. I wrote several things here and finally posted my ultimate version. My first draft I sent to the rabbi and he gave me some good advice.  Some advice on looking for ways to bring all the ideas together. I worked hard. I sweated and got annoyed. It was all the type of writing that I have hated for years. But I finished and I think that it was better than my first draft.  Naso: Reflections of a Nazarite

The day came and I was ready. I did not feel worried or anxious about anything. The women were all worried about crying or freezing because they did not like presenting infront of people. Me, I did not mind at all. I had sent out little Jewish quotes and Omer meditations for the group to work on before the “big” day. I was not worried.

There were 7 of us called to the Torah. I was number 6. The sun was beating down on me in my suit and tallit. I was hot but enjoying everyones’ drashot. My turn came and I was ready. I had my yad in pocket and most of my drash handwritten (the wrong one was in the siddur). One of my fellow Bat Mitzvah leaned over and asked if I wrote in Hebrew or English (such great handwriting).

I walked over to the center of the bimah and started reading my d’rash. About two lines in I lost it. I was about to cry and I had no idea how to recover so I paused. Not that pausing helped do anything but focus me on the fact that I was about to cry. I was thinking “how in the world was I going to regroup and finish this?” I leaned over and looked at my family and friends, smiled and said “this was not supposed to happen.” That got a laught and broke the tension. I finished my d’rash and then had adrenaline floating my eyeballs and deafening my ears. Such a fantastic way to start chanting.

I started. “Velakach ha’cohen et hazroah b’shelah …” I prayed and made it beautiful. When I finished I kissed my tallit that touched the Torah and turned to the cantor and said “I did it.”

I chanted Torah the first time – hopefully there will be many more.

cross posted on Blog Midrash

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Naso: reflections of a Nazarite

April 16, 2009 at 9:59 pm (Torah, conversion)
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Here is the law for the Nazarite:

[This is the law] when a man or woman expresses a nazirite vow to God.  He must separate himself completely from wine and wine-brandy. He may not even drink vinegar made from wine and wine-brandy. He shall not drink any grape beverage, and he shall not eat any grapes or raisins. As long as he is a nazirite, he may not eat anything coming from the grape, from its seeds to its skin. As long as he is under nazirite oath, no cutting instrument shall touch [the hair on] his head. Until he completes his term as a nazirite to God, the uncut hair that grows on his head is sacred. As long as he is a nazirite to God, he may not have any contact with the dead. He may not ritually defile himself even when his father, mother, brother or sister dies, since his God’s nazirite crown is on his head. As long as he is a nazirite, he is holy to God.  – Naso 6: 2-8 (bible.ort.org) 

How am I like the Nazarite? How can I relate to those foreign and restrictive sounding rules? How can I relate to the story?

The Nazarite self-selects him or herself. He chooses to follow the restrictive laws of not eating or drinking any thing made from grapes. He chooses not to cut his hair, and chooses to separate himself from his family and friends during important death and mourning rituals.

I grew up in the midwest. I was a child of WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants). My childhood was very “American” and nominally Christian. We participated in all the “American” holidays and rarely a day existed where we stuck out. I don’t ever remember feeling like we were not part of the whole community.

In my 20’s, I decided to convert to Judaism. I never had an attraction or feeling that I was Jewish growing up. I do not even recall having known a Jewish person. However, becoming Jewish in the assimilated Jewish world reminds me of the Nazarite in the Biblical Jewish world. Firstly, my family and I do not do Christmas. This was the hardest thing for most of my family and friends to understand when talking about conversion. “How can you not do Christmas?” “Does that mean you won’t have a Christmas tree anymore?” Nope. Next I took on a whole new set of holidays that do not intersect with my previous holidays (except Thanksgiving). This, of course, makes scheduling family visits much easier because we do not have to pick which family we go over to break fast or have Passover dinner.  Finally, I took on a whole set of rituals around Shabbat and Judaism.

Each of these separate me from the community I was in. I live within the same community but now have things that make me stand out.

These things that make me stand out are all good. I have replaced Christmas with a year full of wonderful holidays that I have incorporated into my family’s rituals. These Jewish holidays mark each season and provide a celebration in its place. We have eight days of lights for Channukah in Winter, the festival of Purim in the late winter and Passover in Spring. Summer is concluded and fall started with Rosh Hashanna, Yom Kippur, Succot and Simchat Torah.

When there are no holidays we have Shabbat each week. The weekend flies by if  I do not have the chance to sit down with the lit candles and say the prayers over wine and challah. I look forward to this end of week marker as well as the full day with my family and without my work.  These holidays and rituals bring me into a warm community, provide context and guidance to daily life and give me comfort and guideposts through lifecycle and holiday events.

Like the Nazarite I have chosen to be different than the general population. The Nazarite is a Jew who chooses to do things different for a greater sense of commitment to God. I chose to be different to participate with my family in a community and to provide a path to live my life .

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Bar Mitzvah

November 26, 2008 at 8:47 pm (Uncategorized)
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May 30th is my first aliyah.

Nasso is the portion for that day. There are 7 of us that will read that day. Most of the people are woman who did not have the opportunity to do a Bat Mitzvah. There is one other man who did his Bar Mitzvah once but is participating in the class with his wife. Two of us are converts; there was three and one person is not able to continue. Two are from homes that did not do anything Jewish. One married an orthodox man. Most have children who are bar/bat mitzvah age.

I enjoy studying with the class. The thing that is the most challenging is the trope. I am not a singer. I do not even sing loud enough to hear myself. I am not sure how I am going to chant. I am sure once I start practicing it will not be all that difficult.

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