Rav, Rabbi, Rebbe

Q:  Is it too sensitive to ask how the 'veneration' of Chasidic rebbes (or just Chabad? I don't know) is different than non-Chasidic groups? Is that what defines Chasidic Jews as Chasidic? Are there some without ANY rebbe? Do non-Chassidic Os venerate their rabbis? And how is a rebbe different than a rabbi? Which is what in relation to a rav?

--SBW

Wimp

WIMP

By nature, I am a pacifist. What this means is that I would do almost anything to make sure that people get along.  Especially people who wouldn't normally get along, such as people with different ideologies, backgrounds, religious beliefs, or just people who wouldn't normally have the opportunity to actually sit down to get to know one another on a deeper, more personal level.  That's pretty much what this blog is all about, and it jives with a lot of other activities in my life.

But this is not always a good thing. As with any character trait, even a good one, it can be taken too far to the extreme or applied wrongly.

Sometimes I've been notably quiet about certain issues. I'm not going to enumerate what those issues are, because it is not the point of this post to discuss those issues.  The point is to explore what to do when certain issues seem undiscussable. When discussion will only lead to more fighting. And when there doesn't seem to be any way of bridging the gap, yet the truth must be stood up for despite all wishes for peace.

My Band

Ten years ago, my friend Hudy invited me to come to her home on a Saturday night to have an informal "kumzitz" style singing session to lift the spirits of another mutual friend  who was experiencing some health issues.  Considering I love to sing and play piano, and loved the company of these girls, I gladly accepted.  (Also back in those ancient years, child #5 was on the way and all my existing kids were asleep by 7.  Yeah, hard to remember.)

Anyhoo, I went and it was wonderful.  Hudy plays the drums and piano too and is really musical and Becky, our friend who was ill, had a deeply incredible sense of humor and love of life.  Becky passed away a few months ago, actually, at the age of 41, from complications after her decade-long illness, and we will never forget her.

Becky, Hudy, some other friends and I continued to meet a number of times to sing and laugh, and then the ad hoc group kind of disbanded.

Then Hudy met Rachel.

Hudy wanted voice lessons and plays guitar.  Rachel gives voice lessons and wanted to learn guitar.  They decided to meet each week for an hour and swap services.  Eventually each realized the scope of the other's talents and created a video of song for a non-profit called "Project Hope," which provides Jewish video entertainment for women who are hospital-or-bed-bound.  Hudy called me to see if I wanted to work on the project over the summer, but at the time I had a summer job at Camp Raninu in the Poconos and could not participate.

Two years later, Hudy called me again.  "Ruchi, we want to form a band, and we want you to be a part of it.  We'll get together every Wednesday morning and jam.  We don't know where this will go.  Are you in?"

I was in!

And that's how In Harmony was born.



In Harmony is a band comprised of Orthodox women from the widest variety of backgrounds.  Each of us sings, some of us play instruments such as piano, drums, guitar, electric guitar, flute, clarinet, and sax.  Among our ranks are a staging expert, a fashion designer, a social media guru, a super-organized CEO type, and a fundraiser.  Together we have put on one major full-length concert for women and girls only (in line with our religious beliefs) for a sold-out crowd of 500, many smaller performances at a variety of venues, and have our next major concert, where we are expecting 800 women and girls, coming up Sunday, May 26th.

In Harmony is one of the most enjoyable outlets of my life.  Although meeting every Wednesday (more, now, pre-concert) can be taxing on my schedule, I adore the women I work with, who have become close friends and my "band sistas."  I feel alive, knowing I am activating all the parts of my soul that God gave me to uplift and inspire myself and others.  I marvel at the beauty called "music" that God put into the world, and at how we all need each other to created this magnificent product that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Best part is, Hudy, after years of me dropping hints, finally gave me a drum lesson.

Meet my Friend, the Convert: Diplogeek

 Regular readers here are more than familiar with Diplogeek, a woman living abroad in the Foreign Service who is a convert to Judaism.  Diplogeek always has something interesting to say, usually in her signature passionate style.  The life and experience of a convert is a subject that has come up every now and then here, and I asked Diplogeek to share her thoughts, which she graciously has done.  Below, for your edification:

1. How old are you and where are you from?

I'm thirty years old (yikes - that crept up on me) and from small-town New England.

2. What was your religious upbringing?

I was brought up Episcopalian (some people are more familiar with Episcopalianism as Anglicanism or the Church of England, depending on where you're from). Episcopalianism is a mainline, Protestant denomination that was established as the Church of England by Henry VIII after he had a bit of a falling out with the Pope over a divorce. There is gradiation in terms of how conservative Anglican/Episcopal churches are, but most Episcopal churches in the United States, at least, are quite socially (and often theologically) liberal. My own, by Episcopal standards, was fairly conservative; our priest identified as a born-again Christian and was fairly socially conservative. My mother actually wanted to leave for a more liberal church, but my brother and I were familiar with our priest and had friends in the congregation and didn't want to switch, so we stayed. In retrospect, I think this conservative streak in our church contributed to my questioning of Christianity at a relatively early age.

My mother is fairly religious; church most weeks, and as kids, my brother and I were expected to attend. My father, by contrast, was largely secular and only went to church on Christmas, Easter and occasionally Sundays where something special was going on (Girl Scout Sunday, Children's Sunday, stuff like that). His family was pretty areligious, though his mother once told me that he came home as a teenager and told his parents that he wanted to be baptised, which I found interesting. I was an acolyte (an altar girl) for quite a while, and I was confirmed despite my own doubts both because I didn't know at the time that one could convert (I was ten, which was on the young side for confirmation), and because I was under the impression that confirmation was just what was expected of me, and I was a kid who usually tried to check the proverbial boxes. Clearly, it didn't take. I did like the liturgical aspect of worship, and the "smells and bells." As a kid, I was a voracious reader, and I was fascinated by religions generally- still am, to a certain extent.

3. What kinds of schools did you attend?

Typical, public schools. We lived in England for a bit when I was a kid, in London, which was my first experience having a truly diverse peer group. I had classmates that were Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, Hindu, all different races, and that was a huge eye-opener for me. My teachers were generally good, and my classes were usually relatively challenging. I was a fairly good student, I think. I went to a good state university for college and later attended graduate school in the U.K.

4. What was your impression or experience with Jewish people growing up?

I had virtually no direct experience - there were a couple of Jewish kids in my grade, and I remember one boy having a bar mitzvah, but we weren't close friends at all. I knew that Judaism itself fascinated me, and my associations with it were positive, but I didn't have any significant amount of interaction with Jews (aside from one aunt by marriage, who is secular) until I went off to college. Heck, I had never set foot in a shul before college.

5. What was the first time you felt you might have a Jewish connection?

To this day, I really can't explain it. I didn't grow up in an area with many Jews at all - I think there were maybe two in my grade in school, and I wasn't BFFs with them or anything. I have a crystal clear memory of reading a book about the Shoah, of all things, while riding home on the school bus at eight years old, and I just had this flash of... I don't know what. "Revelation" would seem to be overstating it a bit, so I'll just say that it was a sudden understanding that I wanted to be Jewish. I couldn't have articulated the conversion part then, because at that age, I had no idea that converting was something you could do - I just assumed that if you had the good fortune to have Jewish parents, great, but if your parents were Christian or Hindu or whatever, that's what you were, so you had to bloom where you were planted. I found out about conversion at age thirteen or so, when I had been growing increasingly frustrated with Christianity. The more I read about Judaism, the more I found myself saying, "Wait, I've always believed that! And I've always believed this other thing, too!" and I knew that conversion was what I wanted to do, but both my mother's initial, very negative reaction and life circumstances got in the way for a long time.

6. What was your family's reaction to this?

As I alluded to above, my mother was… less than thrilled. At first, she chalked it up to "a phase," which was probably reasonable when you're talking about a teenager but infuriated me at the time. I'd object to going to church, and she'd accuse me of not giving it a fair shake, saying I should really try taking it seriously, so I'd double down for a few weeks and really attempt to buy in, which didn't work. So we'd go back and forth that way, at least as long as I lived at home. Once I left for college, the dynamic changed somewhat. I had signed up to study Hebrew, and I ended up with a bunch of Jewish friends (more coincidentally than anything else), and I started going to services at Hillel every week pretty early on in my Freshman year. The first time I fasted for Yom Kippur was during my Sophomore year. I still visited my family for holidays and stuff, but it was becomming more apparent to them that my religous level was growing, and that this was not a phase.

My mother's issues didn't really stem from an idea that I was somehow throwing my salvation away, because most Episcopalians don't believe that kind of thing. She saw my rejection of her religion as a rejection of her and of my family's culture. That wasn't what it was about, of course, but it took some conversations (and a bit of yelling) for her to fully believe that. My extended family, by contrast, were very cool about it - my aunt, who is also my Godmother, joked that she feels like she's still covered, since I still believe in God. Heh. My brother, grandmother and other family have all been generally supportive of me. They're all a bit bemused, I think, but cool with it. And Mom has come around a lot in the last few years, for which I give her much credit.

7. At any point, did you wonder if pursuing conversion was simply not worth it?

I think everyone wonders that at one time or another. I definitely did - usually when I was reading stuf about all of the denominational fighting over whose conversion was valid and whose weren't. The idea of going through all of the work of converting, marrying Jewish, having a Jewish baby and then have him or her summarily dismissed as "just a goy," as I've seen it expressed in some places online, really, really bothered me (still does), and in between bouts of agonizing over denominational questions, I wondered whether it wouldn't just be easer to be a Unitarian or a secular humanist or whatever. But every time I tried to put Judaism aside, I came back to it like a homing pigeon. And while I read about other religions, I never found one that struck me the way Judaism had. This, "Will she? Won't she?" thing went on for nearly ten years - it's also one of the biggest reasons that I find the whole, "Well, just be a Noachide!" argument to be completely non-viable, at least for me.

I think what finally pushed me to pull the trigger, already, beyond understanding that I couldn't just keep doing the semi-Noachide, living in limbo thing anymore, was when I got into the Foreign Service. This was right around the time several Consulate employees were murdered in Ciudad Juarez, and I remember reading about their deaths and thinking, "You know, I could be sent anywhere. I could go somewhere and die. And if my time is up, and I'm going out like that, I'm at least going out Jewish." I was e-mailing rabbis before I even went to D.C. for training. The incident in Benghazi and the recent death of Anne Smedinghoff have reinforced a certain sense of relief that whatever frustrations I may have on occasion with trying to live Jewishly in China or with the Conversion Issue™ or denominational infighting or the like, I know I'm Jewish, Hashem knows I'm Jewish, and if something awful happens (G-d forbid), that's really what matters. Although admittedly, it's easier to keep that in mind at some times than at others.

8. Can you describe your encounters with Rabbis or other Jewish families that were instrumental in your journey?

I've been fortunate to have had a lot of great rabbis and fellow Jews around to help me along the way. My two best friends from college are Jewish, and they've always been supportive of my decision to convert; I actually went to them with possible Hebrew names when I was getting ready for the mikvah. The Chabad rabbi I had in college who let me come to Shabbos dinner every week knowing that I wasn't yet Jewish (and probably wouldn't be a Chabadnik when I was) and showed me nothing but hospitality. My friend that I met through a teaching program in Japan who's Orthodox, himself, but thinks nothing of having a conversation with me about the vagaries of tefillin. The married couple in my D.C. shul who took me in for Seders and Shabbos dinner during my conversion process. And, of course, my converting rabbi, who, aside from being a great speaker and smart and all of that, knew what buttons to push to make me a better Jew and knew where I needed to be prodded out of my comfort zone… and who didn't bat an eye when I asked him to show me how to lay tefillin properly.

9. How is your life different as a Jew?

I spend much more time thinking about logistical things like what holidays are coming up and what I need to do to prepare. For example, I mapped out the dates for High Holy Days last year right after Pesach and started looking for tickets, because I knew I was going to leave the country for the holidays and wanted to be sure I was squared away. Most people aren't having these kinds of issues over Christmas. It's a lot easier to just go with the flow if you're Christian, even nominally, because your holidays are almost always the default for society at large. Especially living in China, I always feel under pressure to either make sure I can do something here or get out of town for major holidays. It's tough, and it can be lonely and a bit exhausting, but I've met some brilliant people as a result, so it has its benefits, as well.

10. Is there anything you miss about life before Judaism?

I miss how easy everything was. Who cares who I marry? Who cares what I eat? Why not work on Saturday? Now, I have to give a lot more thought to the personal decisions I make, both in terms of what will best set me up for success in my Jewish practices, but also because if I'm the only Jew someone ever meets, I don't want them thinking we're all jerks or something. So in that sense, I do think that I feel a certain level of pressure to behave in such a way as to be a positive reflection on other Jews (I don't claim to always measure up to that goal, but I do my best). Still, the whole "wrestling with G-d" thing is right there in the name, so it's not as if I didn't know what I was getting into, and I wouldn't change my decision to convert.

Also, BLTs and unagi (eel) sushi. Those are the only two pork/shellfish type things I really, really miss, although I suppose I could swap turkey bacon for the pork bacon on the BLT.

11.  What is the best part about life as a Jew?

Feeling, for lack of a better description, like my inside matches my outside now.  I feel like I'm finally able to identify with the community of my choosing and that I've claimed this identity that I instinctively knew was supposed to be mine. There are very few times in life, I think, where one is privileged to have that feeling, so I hold it very dear.

12.  What is your experience with the Orthodox Jewish community?

Relatively broad, I think, certainly for someone who didn't grow up in a Jewish community at all. I was a regular attendee at Chabad in college, and I went to a Chabad syagogue in Japan when I lived there after college. I have a handful of frum friends, though most are Modern Orthodox as opposed to Yeshivish or non-Chabad Hasidic. My experiences with the Orthodox community, both online and in real life, have been all over the map in terms of whether they were positive or negative. In real life, I would say they skew more positive, while online, they tend to be far more negative. Not entirely surprising, considering how most people (Jewish or otherwise) tend to behave when they have both anonymity and a consequence-free environment.

I do think that the so-called "slide to the right" and what can look to an outsider like increasing reliance on dozens of chumrot and the most machmir interpretation of halacha possible is ultimately a negative development, but it's not my community, so it's not really for me to say. That being said, I do find myself resentful, on occasion, of the dismissive attitude that some segments of the Orthodox community have towards their heterodox brethren, and there are a number of things about the Orthodox conversion system (in as much as it can be called a system, to be fair, as it's not always monolithic) that make me angry. The latter contributed significantly to my decision to convert under Conservative auspices, actually.

I also worry sometimes about what would happen to me if I had the misfortune to die somewhere where my remains couldn't be repatriated in a timely fashion, as if there's a Jewish cemetary at all, the vast majority of those are Orthodox-run and would likely refuse me burial as a result of who was on my beit din. Then again, I would hope that I'll have better things to occupy myself once I've shuffled off this mortal coil than people bickering over how to dispose of my corpse!

13. What message would you like born-Jews to hear about a convert's experience?

Not all of us converted because we were dating, engaged or married to a Jewish guy (or girl), for one. I've actually never dated a Jewish guy (not for lack of trying, for the record, so much as a severe case of bad timing). If I never get that question again, it would be too soon.

Also, I know a lot of converts, and I don't know a single one that just picked a denomination at random or converted heterodox because they didn't care about Torah or "didn't understand what Orthodoxy is about" or any of those kinds of things. Most converts I know agonized over which denomination to choose, and virtually all would prefer that the question of denomination was a non-issue. I can say that personally, I did not choose Conservative Judaism because I'm afraid to keep the mitzvot or don't care about them or don't consider them binding, but because I could not reconcile my views on the halacha of egalitarianism with the reality that, in all likelihood, if I pursued an Orthodox conversion, it would be very difficult for me to affiliate with more left-wing elements of the Orthodox community (i.e. women's prayer groups and/or partnership minyanim) where I would find the most spiritual resonance and remain reasonably sure that my conversion would continue to be widely-accepted and that I wouldn't potentially endanger the validity of my rabbi's other conversions.

The best piece of advice I can give regarding converts - all converts - is that you should never assume. Don't assume that you know why we converted or what our background was before we were Jewish or why we chose the denomination we did. In fact, don't assume that that Jewish person sitting next to you was born that way, because there's every possibility that no matter how "FFB" or born Jewish they seem, they're actually a ger (or their parent was). Also, don't ask people about their status or start grilling them about who converted them or where or who was on their beit din. It's super tacky, for one, none of your business, for another (unless you're marrying them, of course) and totally against halacha. Most of us are happy to talk about our experiences, but on our own terms, not because some stranger is giving us the third degree at the oneg.

14. What is your favorite and least favorite part of this blog?

My favorite part is the openness with which people are generally allowed to converse here. Anyone who reads my comments regularly knows that I'm not afraid to be at odds with Ruchi or various parts of the commentariat, and I've never felt censored or anything like that.

My least favorite part is a product of the openness that I mentioned above, which is that I've often read things in the comments that strike me as hurtful, ill-informed, uncharitable or simply ignorant. This has come out moreso on some topics than others, and I view it as the price we pay for having an open forum for discussing these issues. I have no doubt that there are other commenters that view my own comments as any or all of the above, so it cuts both ways. It does bother me very much when I read blanket statements about non-Jews (or heterodox Jews) and what they think, believe or how they behave, for instance, from people who I suspect have relatively minimal day to day interaction with the non-Jewish (or heterodox) world.

15. Can you describe your unique profession and how that impacts or interfaces with your Jewish identity?

As evidenced by the name, I'm a diplomat, although I pretty much never refer to myself that way- if someone asks me what I do, I tell them that I'm a Foreign Service Officer, which is both less insufferable-sounding and more accurate, since I think "diplomat" conjures up images of Secretary Clinton brokering international peace treaties, which isn't something I do (at least, not this week). I'm a Consular Officer, meaning that on a day to day basis, I do visa work (adjudicating visas for people who want to visit or immigrate to the United States) or American Citizen Services (assisting Americans abroad, either with basic stuff like lost or replacement passports or more scary stuff like people who have been arrested or convicted or repatriating the remains of citizens who have died abroad). I'm currently posted in China, but will be returning to the U.S. for a while very soon, which is exciting, since I haven't been back in two years (!).

My Jewish identity has had a huge impact on my life as an FSO - more so than I expected, actually. The most obvious way is when it comes to bidding. In the Foreign Service, you "bid" on your job, meaning that you express preferences about where you would like to go and what kind of work you would like to do, and people higher up the foodchain than you look at your preferences (along with everyone else's) and decide where you're headed next. When I bid on my next post, I was adamant that it would be somewhere with a reasonably-sized Jewish community. I expect that that will always guide my bidding strategy and, subsequently, my career.

More subtly, I've spent a lot of annual leave days on taking off for Jewish holidays, which can be difficult sometimes. Before I left the States, I sat down with my rabbi to talk over the halachic implications of writing a living will and burial instructions in case anything happened (since my non-Jewish family wouldn't know what to do in that regard). I serve in a country with very, very few Jews (relative to the population size, anyway), so it's not unusual for me to be the first Jew someone has met; I'm acutely conscious of the fact that I can potentially be viewed as a representative for all of Judaism, even if I don't intend to come across that way. I was told by a tour guide that I had literally doubled the Jewish population of Harbin (once one of the biggest Jewish communities in Asia) when I went there on a weekend trip with friends. Being the only Jew (or one of a handful of Jews) at a post means creating my own Jewish community, often of non-Jews. I'm really lucky that my colleagues are hugely supportive of that as far as things like being my treif spotters when we go out to eat, participating if I throw a party for Chanukah or Purim or, on occasion, listening to me vent about how difficult it can be to be Jewish here.

On the bright side, my Jewish geography is pretty fantastic these days as a result of traveling so much for the bigger holidays (I usually try to get out of town and go someplace with a bigger community and, if it's an option, an egalitarian synagogue). In the last couple of years, I've spent holidays in five different countries and encountered multiple people who knew my rabbi back in the States or with whom I had one or two degrees of separation. You realize how small the world is when you travel a bit, and that especially applies to the Jewish world.

Something unexpected about my life as an FSO is that without any effort on my part, I've run into multiple other converts to Judaism- of various denominations. The ones I know are people that I knew first in the Foreign Service context, and after some conversation, we realized that we were both converts. It wasn't something that I expected at all, and we've speculated occasionally on just how that worked out, particularly as I'm sure there are more of us geirim out there in Foreign Service land beyond just my circle of acquaintances. It's a very unique situation, being a convert in the Foreign Service, but apparently not as unique as I thought!

This is probably also the appropriate place to say that all of my thoughts here are my own and not representative of the U.S. Government or a reflection of U.S. Government policy. Why the USG would have any position on the question of conversion to Judaism, I have no idea, but just in case, there's the obligatory disclaimer.

Jew Me Down

When I learned of Senator Dennis Johnson's slur while debating a bill, I noticed something weird.

Most of my Orthodox friends were not as shocked or outraged as my non-Orthodox friends.

At first I wondered if Senator Johnson were perhaps unaware of the meaning of the slur.  For example, I used the term "gypped" until recently, having been totally clueless that this term is a pejorative against Gypsies (Roma).  I was likewise unaware, until recently, that "midget" is derogatory while "dwarf" is preferred, and that the Deaf community prefers Deaf with a capital "d."

But when I watched the Senator's weak apology, this explanation seemed unlikely.

So why am I not shocked or outraged?  Mostly, because I am very "out" about my Judaism and am therefore totally aware, and even expect, to some extent, anti-semitism.  I remember my grandparents telling me how some of their best Hungarian and Polish neighbors turned on them with a vengeance during the Holocaust.  In taking a long view of Jewish history, this is the norm rather than the exception.

Do I think that Senator Johnson hates Jews?  Nah.  But neither do I fool myself into thinking that we're well-liked out there in the world.  Yes, even in America, and yes, even today.  I would term it begrudging acceptance, for the most part.  And I am aware that in the heterodox community, this is not a very popular view.  Hence the shock and outrage anew each time a politician or celebrity slips in public with an anti-Jewish slur.

There's a value to the shock and outrage, though.  I think it draws us together as a people and reminds us that we are different.  As you know, I think this a good thing.

In this world, there are some philo-semites and there are some anti-semites.  The difference arises in your view of which category most of the world falls into.  

What do you think?

Prayer for Boston

Dear readers,

This post is a little off the beaten track for me, but I've been sick about the news out of Boston.  I keep hearing people talk about praying for Boston, but I know that many Jews have a hard time praying, whether formally or organically.  Here is a short prayer that I will be saying tonight at candle-lighting.  Feel free to say it as well and share, or use it to inspire your own.

"Dear G-d,

I've been struggling all week with the Boston bombing.  It's so hard for me to understand how these things happen.  But G-d, I recognize, in my mind if not emotionally, that You have Your ways and Your plans that are unfathomable to me.

I can't control evil, but I can fight it by bringing a little more goodness into the world.  And so G-d, I would like to use these moments to show faith and compassion by praying.

Please, G-d, bring comfort to the innocent families of the victims.  Please bring healing to the injured.  Help all of them to heal in their bodies and minds, and to heal in their faith in the essential goodness of this world.  Help them and us heal in understanding that while there is evil in this world, it is mostly a good place with mostly good people.  Restore their faith in humanity.  Help them to rebuild normal lives. 

And please G-d, assist the law enforcement professionals in ending evil.  Bring justice, that we may live in peace and joy, and may we remember You in those moments as well."

Shabbat shalom,
Ruchi

The Bnei Mitzvah Blues

Everyone's talking about bnei mitzvah.  Rabbinical students want to ban them.  Kids are taking to youtube for cooler and more expensive invitations than you've ever dreamed of.  Non-Jews want to inspire their kids by giving them some ceremony which seem to benefit no one but the party planners, photographers, and DJs.

And this might sound kind of funny coming from someone who helps people plan their kids' rites of passage, but I think most Jews on this planet, or I should say, in North America, make far too big of a deal about this without even knowing what the ceremony is or isn't supposed to celebrate.

On this thread, where a friend of mine gave some tips as far as what to give as gifts, I responded such:

You wrote: “a celebration of achievement. It is a spiritual rite of passage that connects one generation to another.” I would demur. I think it’s a celebration of arrival through an entryway. An entryway to life as a responsible Jew. The “achievement” hasn’t actually happened yet, and a child becomes bar or bat mitzvah when they have their (Hebrew) birthday on the thirteenth (for girls twelfth) birthday of their lives – this is an upgrade in spiritual status, that, according to the Jewish sources, takes place whether they are reading from the Torah, vacationing in St. Martin, asleep, or converted out. It happens to you. How you celebrate it is entirely optional and has varied greatly by community and history.

I recognize that this is radically different from how most Jews think about bnei mitzvah, but it’s what the sources say.

What do most American kids think?  That you have to go to Hebrew school for (fill in the blank) years, to learn Hebrew, so that you can read from the Torah, so that you can have a party like your friends and get lots of gifts.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.  My dear American Jewish children:

1. You don't have to go to Hebrew school.
2. You don't have to learn Hebrew.
3. You most certainly do not have to read from the Torah.
4. You do not deserve a party for that dubious accomplishment or any other for that matter.

So what do you have to do?

1. Learn about Judaism from whichever source will inspire you most to live it, love it, breathe it, and understand it.
2. Learn how to talk to God in your own words.
3. Acknowledge in some way that the day you turn 12 or 13 is special because you are now autonomously responsible to live Jewishly.
4. Thank your parents for giving you all of the above.

Shall I tell you why I feel so strongly about this?

1. Going to Hebrew school to learn Hebrew reading, a skill that many kids will never use again soon enough to matter, often makes them hate Judaism.
2. Kids are so entitled and spoiled as it is, that we don't need to feed the frenzy by offering them a mini-wedding (which actually deifies them far more than a wedding) for "performing" in Hebrew.
3. And of course, the problem everyone, including me, is struggling with: how to keep kids engaged once the carrot is consumed off the stick (you can't use your gifts?  won't get your album?  unless you keep studying Judaism?).

What's the solution?  Haha, if I could put that in a paragraph I'd be a wealthy woman.  Of course there are no easy solutions.  The way most North American congregations have evolved, they are often bnei mitzvah factories.  Where else are dues coming from?  But I am not here to solve the problem of congregational survival.  I am here to solve the problem of bored, spoiled, disconnected kids.  And parents, this is in YOUR HANDS.

Take back control.  Stop feeding the cycle.  Say "no" to crazy parties, to multiple thousands of dollars going, yes, down the drain, to ridiculous senses of entitlement among our kids who still think they deserve who-knows-what.  If you really want your child to be "affiliated" as a Jew, find good role models in Judaism for your kids, and make sure they hang out with your kids as often and as enjoyably as possible.  Don't be afraid to talk about God as though He actually exists.  Bring Judaism into your home as a living, breathing religion.

Mostly, find ways to engage in Jewish study yourself and demonstrate to your kids that Jewish learning never stops.  "If you truly wish your children to study Torah, study it yourself in their presence. They will follow your example. Otherwise, they will not themselves study Torah but will simply instruct their children to do so" (Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Kotzk).

And then we'll be up to the grandkids' bnei mitzvah.  I wonder what those will look like.