She's Leaving Home

Despite spending my last two years at Brandeis (plus the year after graduation) planning and preparing for nursing school, I had come to a point where I was unconscious of the new step I was about to take. In addition to starting the classes and clinical rotations that will prepare me for nursing, something I had never imagined choosing when I applied to college, I will be leaving my home state for the first time.

The Challenges of "Membership Fees"

When I regularly went to church (two weeks old - sophomore year of high school), the definition of being a church member seemed fairly simple. Babies got baptized, school age children went to church school, 7th graders finished Confirmation and, confirming the promises their parents made for them when they were infants, became church members. On my Confirmation Sunday, I stood with my class and promised to be a good, committed Protestant. I was not expected to pay for the privelege of membership in the community in which I was raised. Some months before I converted to Judaism, I formally ended my church membership. I received a wonderful letter from the senior minister who wished me well on my new path. When I have visited to see family friends and church school classmates, I always felt welcome.

Throughout my conversion process, I was a "regular" at my synagogue, which meant that I attended Sabbath services nearly every week. In addition, I had several meetings with my rabbi. I felt like an "unofficial" member, which was good enough for me. Outside of attending worship services, I was not involved in the synagogue. My freshman year of college, however, I was offered a membership application on Rosh Hashanah. I took it and filled it out, figuring this was my way of paying back. While it felt nice to be "official" at the time, my involvement didn't change or suddenly feel different. Except, of course, when I got letters about membership fees.

In contrast to the Protestant system, in which members give voluntarily during (and outside of) the offering, most synagogues expect people to contribute a fixed portion of their income, or a pre-set fee, in order to be members. At many congregations, there are also charges for seats at High Holy Day services. During my first year of membership at my synagogue, I didn't have a job, so I arranged with the treasurer to pay $15 per month instead of the standard membership and building fees, which added up to over $500 annually.

I was grateful to be able to make this arrangement, since some synagogues don't make exceptions for lower-income or young members. At the same time, it felt embarassing to have to make a special request for the arrangement. While these arrangements are always confidential, they unintentionally set up a dichotomy between those who can pay the membership fee and those who cannot. Letting each person to pay what he/she is able to/wishes to allows people with limited budgets to not feel embarassed or a burden and people with larger budgets to not feel "forced" to support their synagogue financially.

To Kvetch or Not to Kvetch?

In the beginning, a bar mitzvah — literally, the point at which a young man is included in the religious majority (age 13) — was marked by the young man reading the final portion of the Torah reading and giving a teaching on that week's passage, often followed by a meal. The main focus of the bar mitzvah was that this young man was now responsible for his religious choices and could be counted in a prayer quorum (minyan), not to mention be able to lead a service. 

For a long time, a girl of bat mitzvah age simply marked the rite of passage by giving a speech and being the guest of honor at a celebratory meal. In traditional communities this is still true; in liberal communities bat mitzvah girls also read Torah, a relatively recent change (started by Mordechai Kaplan) given Judaism's long history.

What I don't understand is how, in the United States, some "unsynagogued" (the term "unchurched" seems inappropriate somehow) Jews have come to believe that having a bar or bat mitzvah ceremony is a condition for being considered Jewish, or for "becoming" an adult. In many American synagogues, what was historically a simply recognition of age has become, in some aspects, a performance. Not just of the child, but of the parents, the clergy, the tutor, the Hebrew school teacher, and the caterer.

Rather than just have the child lead parts of the service, read Torah/teach Torah, and be able to celebrate after the service with her friends and family, many congregations have the parents and child's tutor(s) make speeches about the child's accomplishments. Sometimes these speeches have the positive effect of reminding the attendees that 13-year-olds are capable of great insight and kindness, and that the child has worked very, very hard. Other times, the speeches seem to start with when the child is conceived, slowing narrating the child's entire 13 years. It's hard to watch the child standing up through these speeches, and harder to imagine their internal squirming and eye-rolling.

The issue I have with these speeches, more than how they seem to last forever, is how they abruptly break up the service, making sudden shifts between prayer and kvetching. When I go to my home synagogue, I go there to pray. Not to hear about how every bar/bat mitzvah kid from the synagogue is destined to become a tzaddik (righteous person) who also happens to be really good at soccer, dance, singing, drawing, theater, guitar and calculus. A prayer service is supposed to serve G-d. Not thirteen year olds.