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Beginning the Journey: Preparing for your Bar/Bat Mitzvah Session 1: Getting Started

Rabbi Salomon Gruenwald Congregation Hebrew Educational Alliance 303-758-9400 sgruenwald@headenver.org. Beginning the Journey: Preparing for your Bar/Bat Mitzvah Session 1: Getting Started. Today’s Goals. Overview of the Curriculum History and Context of Bar/Bat Mitzvah

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Beginning the Journey: Preparing for your Bar/Bat Mitzvah Session 1: Getting Started

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  1. Rabbi Salomon Gruenwald Congregation Hebrew Educational Alliance 303-758-9400 sgruenwald@headenver.org Beginning the Journey:Preparing for your Bar/Bat MitzvahSession 1: Getting Started

  2. Today’s Goals • Overview of the Curriculum • History and Context of Bar/Bat Mitzvah • The Bar/Bat Mitzvah Team Approach • Making your Bar/Bat Mitzvah a Meaningful Experience • Starting to Learn your Parsha

  3. Course Overview

  4. Course Objectives • Involve the whole family • Gain skill in reading and interpreting Torah • Learn how to write and give a d’var Torah • Deepen appreciation for the Shabbat services • Strengthen ties to Jewish community and values • Create lasting and meaningful memories

  5. What is a Bar/Bat Mitzvah? • A Bar or Bat Mitzvah is not an event or a ceremony • It is not a verb • It is not something you have • A Bar/Bat Mitzvah is what you become!

  6. What is a Bar/Bat Mitzvah? Bar: Aramaic for “Son” (Hebrew: Ben). Bat: Hebrew for “Daughter” Mitzvah: Commandment

  7. What is a Bar/Bat Mitzvah? • No mention of “bar mitzvah” in the Torah • Earliest clue is in the Mishna (200 CE): At five, one should study Scripture At ten, one should study Mishna At thirteen, one is ready to do mitzvot At fifteen, one is ready to study Talmud At eighteen, one is ready for the Huppah At twenty, for providing for a family… (PirkeiAvot, 5:21)

  8. What is a Bar/Bat Mitzvah? • Jews started making celebrations around bar mitzvah in medieval Spain. In recognition of a young man’s new status, he was honored with an aliyah to the Torah shortly after his 13th birthday. • The practice spread through communities in Europe and beyond.

  9. What is a Bar/Bat Mitzvah? • Jews in America embraced bar mitzvah as a celebration of Jewish identity and personal achievement.

  10. What is a Bar/Bat Mitzvah? • In modern culture, becoming an adult means claiming privileges and liberties. • It is also about being legally responsible for your own actions. • It is a point of arrival

  11. What is a Bar/Bat Mitzvah? • In Jewish culture, becoming an adult is a process that begins at 13. • It means taking on new obligations and duties • Being counted in a minyan • Reading from the Torah • Leading services • Fasting • Performing mitzvot

  12. Smashing Idols

  13. What is a Bar/Bat Mitzvah? • The Mishna (Avot 1:2) says: The World rests upon three pillars: • Torah • Worship (Avodah) • Acts of Kindness (GimmilutHessed) • On the day you celebrate becoming a bar/bat mitzvah, you will demonstrate a commitment to adult Jewish responsibilities in 3 ways: • Torah = Reading from the Torah and teaching Torah • Avodah = Leading a community in prayer • Hessed = Your “Mitzvah Project”

  14. Bat Mitzvah • According to the Talmud, a girl also takes on responsibility for the mitzvot when she turns 12. • In the middle ages, some communities held modest parties to celebrate a girl coming of age. • The first bat mitzvah ceremony in the US took place in 1922. Judith Kaplan Eisenstein – daughter of Mordechai Kaplan (founder of Reconstructionist Judaism). • Today in most non-Orthodox synagogues, bat mitzvahs are identical to bar mitzvahs.

  15. Making Your Bar/Bat Mitzvah More Meaningful: The Team Approach “By defining goals and expectations at this point, you can prevent disappointment and chaos by establishing the clarity and mutual understanding needed to sustain a joyful, thought-provoking, and satisfying experience for all who are involved.” Rabbi Goldie Milgram, author of Making Your Bar/Bat Mitzvah

  16. Forming your Team

  17. Parents as Team Members, Not Taskmasters

  18. Goals of Bar/Bat Mitzvah Planning • Emotional Satisfaction • Intellectual Expansion • Spiritual Connection • Logistical Excellence

  19. Expectations and Concerns • What emotions do you expect and hope to experience along the way to and on the day of your bar/bat mitzvah service? Brainstorm… don’t over-think this. Write down whatever comes to mind.

  20. Making your Bar/Bat Mitzvah Memorable

  21. Creating your Bar/Bat Mitzvah Scrapbook

  22. Online Scrapbooking Resources Scrapblog.com Smilebox.com Famento.com Scrapease.com Scrapo.com Shutterfly.com

  23. Buying a Scrapbook The Bar/Bat Mitzvah Memory Book By Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin and Nina Salkin

  24. Homework - For Students • Read your Parsha • Outline the main points • Start your Bar/Bat Mitzvah Scrapbook • With your parents, make a family tree

  25. Help your child start his/her scrapbook. 1st Assignment: make a family tree Homework - for Parents

  26. Next Time December 5, 12-2 pm You and Your Family: Bar/Bat Mitzvah as a Rite of Passage

  27. Rabbi Salomon Gruenwald Congregation Hebrew Educational Alliance 303-758-9400 sgruenwald@headenver.org Beginning the Journey:Preparing for your Bar/Bat Mitzvah

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