Bar mitzvah: Parental blessing

[As part of the ceremony at temple, parents are invited to give a short blessing to their child. Here is ours.]

Rachel 

Jordan, you have always been someone who makes other people happy. Since you were very young, you have been lighting up a room with your enthusiasm, cheering people up when they’re sad, and encouraging people when things are hard. You see things in their best light. When life serves you lemons, you make tasty lemonade – and share it with your brother.

Dale 

Now you are getting older, and as you may have noticed, some things are starting to get harder. So here is some advice from your parents.

• Treat people like people. When you talk about someone, remember the real person you are speaking about. 
• Be empathetic. You have a natural talent for tuning in to other people’s feelings; use it to sense what’s going on for them and respond with compassion. 
• At the same time, follow your own moral compass. Be careful what you let others pull you into. You know what’s right; stick up for it. 

Rachel 

Also, get enough sleep. :)

In the coming years, we want you to have deep friendships; to share yourself with your community; to keep up your appreciation and gratitude for the wonderful world around you; and to give back some of what is given to you, to make the world more just.

Dale 

For your thirteenth birthday, your Granty Jes and Aunt Deena sent you a card that said, “You are a rare and powerful fun magnet.” We agree, and we want you to know that being a good person is fun; standing up for what you believe in is fun; and working hard for a big result is fun.

Rachel 

Jordan, we are so proud of you, and we love you very much.

Bar mitzvah: Jordan's d'var

--> [Verbatim.]

Parshat Re'eh continues the final speech by Moses to the Israelites. In this speech Moses talks about the Israelites being blessed or cursed, depending on whether they choose to follow the commandments or not. Moses then encourages the Israelites to avoid the rituals of other religions. For example: “do not drink the blood of a killed animal.” He also tells them to burn other people's altars and places of worship. Moses tells the Israelites to only worship their own God. If a person were to tell you to worship other Gods, “let your hand be the first to put that person to death.” Then Moses enforces the dietary laws of kashrut. Moses tells the Israelites how to treat slaves, then he goes on a rant about the holidays. Through it all Moses calls the Israelites an am segulah - a treasured people.

Am segulah suggests that the Israelites are a chosen people, but what does that really mean? The Torah tells us that being a chosen people means that you are the “treasured people” “chosen by God” or even “the heart of nations.” Personally, I believe the Torah is trying to tell us that God loves us and protects us. So what does it mean to be treasured? To be loved and protected. I think that I am protected, not by God alone, but by my family and friends, my community, who treasure me.

Rashi suggests that the people are like a precious golden cup or gem among a larger collection of cups and gems belonging to a ruler. They are precious, special, but not exclusive. “All people and nations belong to God,” writes Rashi, “No people, including Israel, can claim that it alone is God’s people.” Rashi states that we are an amazing, great, and loved people, but we are not the only ones. We must show respect to those who deserve to be respected, but teach others how to earn respect. I have Muslim people in my school who deserves to be respected as much as I do. From my point of view they are people just as good as me and therefore deserve the same respect.

Philosopher Martin Buber maintains that the notion of Israel as a Chosen People “does not indicate a feeling of superiority but a sense of destiny. It does not spring from a comparison with others but from a concentrated devotion to a task, to the task that molded a people into a nation.” I like Buber's teaching because he says that being a chosen people does not come from being better than others. He states that it is less of an identity cast upon us, but something we choose to set upon ourselves. When my team wins a game of ultimate frisbee, we did not win because of fate, we won because we set ourselves a goal and worked hard towards it.

I am a member of the Northwest Boychoir and in my opinion, the Jews being the chosen people is a little bit like being in the highest level of the choir. I have a lot of friends and buddies in choir and a lot of my friends in school and other places as well as choir are Jewish. This makes me feel chosen because I get to meet more people and make more friends. Both choir and being Jewish are fun. Choir is fun because the group is good and being Jewish is fun because of the extensive amount of holidays and fun events. Both are also fun because of friends, of course. When ever I am having fun I feel very chosen and special. I have been in choir for a long time (since I was five) and I have been Jewish all my life. Losing either would make me lose something important in my life. They both open up opportunities. Being Jewish means more camps, more holidays, more eccentric traditions and food. Being in choir means a tour every other year, the ability to feel professional. I get to perform in many different places and in front of many different people. This makes me feel chosen because it gives me something that I wouldn't have otherwise.

I was “chosen” to be in the choir but in the big picture, I worked hard. I think that those four hundred years of labor with the Egyptians was the Israelites' work towards being the chosen people, whether they knew it or not. But now that I am in the choir I can't just say I’m done and accept my reward, I still have to work, but I know what I’m doing and am prepared to keep working. I think that God expected the Jews to be prepared for work when they set out into the desert. I think that God thought that they would rise to the occasion. But the Israelites took being free as: wander for an hour or two than sit down in a nice house with watermelon and working air conditioning. It’s as if you want to become a politician, and you work hard to become president. You make it. You're president. The thing you do next is NOT goof off for the next four years, you still have to work. Cough cough.

I hope that we can walk away from this having learned that being a chosen people is not just something that you're born or convert into, it is also an identity. It can be lost, but also earned.

Bar mitzvah: Family

The bar mitzvah weekend was a banner weekend for our family. I had been anxious about the family part, because part of the bar mitzvah ceremony is physically handing down the Torah from the grandparents, to the parents, to the kid, and there is a painful absence of grandparents on my side. But the reality was wonderful. My godfather Alan and my aunts Jes and Deena served as substitute grandparents, and Dale’s mom was there too; I felt great about it. 

Beyond that, the whole weekend was an awesome family event. My maternal Uncle Fred and Aunt Linda came (from Maine) with my brother Michael (from Massachusetts), which was a rare treat; this is the first time any of them have visited me in Seattle, though my aunt and uncle came to Portland for Dale’s and my wedding in 1993, and met us in Port Townsend (with my dad) two years ago. We spent a wonderful day on Vashon Island, including a fine ferry ride, beautiful views, and picking up a flat of the most stunning strawberries from a friend’s farm. Our dear Vashon-savvy friend Bob Moss made the day great by arranging a beautiful itinerary for us (including the berries!) and lending us his minivan so we could all go in one car.

Back in Seattle, we had multiple lovely casual events at our house, with family and old friends in the kitchen and at the grill. Very haimish.

That last one is Selena, my dear friend from when she and I were the age that Jordan is now, baking a strawberry cake with Kari and my aunt Linda. I’m so happy Selena was able to come! Here is a precious picture of her and Bekah and me, with our thirteen-year-old children. It doesn't mean much of anything to the kids that their moms were best friends who had babies at the same time, lo these many years ago… but it means a lot to us!

The big winner for this weekend, though, was my brother, who said it was the “trip of a lifetime.” I think he had come expecting to enjoy visiting me and Dale and the kids, and to enjoy Seattle. He did have a great time being a tourist – he loves good food and good coffee and being out on the water, and Seattle is great for all those things. But he had not anticipated the connection he felt to our greater family and friends and community, and he was stunned, overwhelmed really, by the warmth of the welcome he got from our people. My aunts and Dale’s family and our many many dear longtime friends were pretty excited to meet him after all these years. All this love did not surprise me at all; my brother is an incredibly warm and charming guy and quite an interesting person, so of course everyone loved him. I’m just glad he finally came! He promises to be back soon.

Bar mitzvah: Party

The day after the bar mitzvah ceremony, we had a smashing party. I tell you what, it was absolutely great. We co-hosted the party with the Graybills, which worked out perfectly; we have many of the same friends, and the out-of-towners from each side enjoyed meeting each other. There were about 120 people there. It was at the Center for Urban Horticulture, a gorgeous botanical garden with pleasant indoor spaces. The weather was perfect. There was great food. There was an Italian soda bar. There was terrific live music by Dale’s band, the Steering Committee. There was a room full of social games that we had rented for the occasion, including air hockey, foosball, giant Connect Four, and giant chess. Here are Jordan and Ian digging Italian sodas and air hockey, and then me relaxing with my brother. 

There was traditional dancing, including chair dances, which were hilarious.

There was a wonderful slide show of the two boys’ lives, and delightful and touching speeches (posted elsewhere). It really could not have been better. Jordan was well enough to enjoy the heck out of everything, thank goodness, and we were all so relieved and relaxed. A true simcha!

Bar mitzvah: Ceremony

Listen – He was awesome. He did everything he prepared to do and he did it so beautifully, with his pure voice and his clear delivery. We could not be more proud. Here are a couple of gorgeous pictures from the rehearsal the day before (you don’t take photos during a service). That beautiful tallit was a gift from Jes and Deena. 

At our temple kids become bar or bat mitzvah in pairs, because our religious school is so large that there wouldn’t be enough weekends in the year otherwise. We partnered with our best buddies the Graybills, with whom we have been friends since we moved to Seattle (when the boys were four). One of the many beautiful parts of the service is when the two boys read haftarah side by side.



All this said, things did not go entirely according to plan. Just at the beginning of Jordan’s part of the service, he misread a prayer in English, and tried to correct himself but misread it again, and became unsteady on his feet, and wobbled away from the bimah. Jordan told us later that his hearing faded away, and he heard a ringing in his ears, and saw white spots in his vision that increased until they took over his visual field. In other words, he was starting to faint. From the congregation’s perspective, he looked as white as a sheet. The rabbi helped him sit down and then a series of things happened – our pediatrician friend went up there to help, Dale and I went up too, and Jordan was discreetly throwing up into a trash can that some fast-moving person had placed next to him, all hidden behind the wings of the rabbi’s outstretched tallit. We helped him into the cantor’s office (which is kind of “backstage” of the bimah). I was totally unclear about what was going on. Obviously Jordan was unwell, but I did not have any clear sense of what the problem was, what anyone should do, or what was going to happen next. Fortunately, our pediatrician friend knew to help Jordan lie down on the floor with his feet up on a chair until some color had returned to his face, and knew that with some recovery time, Jordan might be able to continue the service. The rabbi and the cantor, who I’m pretty sure had not encountered this situation before, rearranged the order of some things and led an extra song or two to give Jordan time to get back on his feet.

And he did. After a few minutes, he sat up, then stood up, and went back out to the bimah. He received the Torah that was physically passed down from the grandparent generation, to us parents, to him. He carried the Torah (which probably weighs 35 lbs) all around the sanctuary, with Aaron and me and Dale right behind him. I was ready to catch him (or the Torah!?) if help was needed – but he didn’t need help. He went through the rest of the service and did every single thing and he was awesome. In his Torah reading he sounded a little like our temple president, who reads with entrancing melodiousness. We were all so amazed and impressed and relieved and I don’t even know what. I am still astonished.

Jessica said something like, “If you can faint on the bimah and come back and nail your haftarah, you are for sure a man,” and I have to agree. I wouldn’t wish his experience on anyone but he really did show his stuff. His buddy Ian was also awesome: he delivered all of his parts of the service with aplomb even amidst all the distraction, and was gracious and flexible and hilarious at a perfect moment. I have to think it was nice for Jordan to have such a good friend up there with him.

Jordan’s fever came back later that day or maybe the next day, and lasted three more days. His doctor said the fainting was an unfortunate combination of various things… maybe fever coming on again, maybe dehydration, maybe nerves, definitely a lot of standing (two hours of family photos before the service). I feel terrible about it – I can’t help thinking that there might have been more I could have done to keep him healthy that day. But Jordan seems to feel fine about it, and I am trying to follow his example. “It wasn’t my fault I was sick,” he said, “And I got back up and did everything, which I think was pretty great.” Amen to that!

Bar mitzvah: Preparation

Jordan has become bar mitzvah! Actually I think a boy becomes bar mitzvah on his thirteenth birthday with or without a ceremony; but it’s an awesome ceremony, and we are glad we all got to participate fully in it. His responsibilities included leading the regular Shabbat prayer service, chanting a particular part of Torah by reading straight from the Torah scroll itself, chanting an accompanying reading from another part of the bible (the Haftarah), and delivering a d’var (a sermon – the word “d’var” means “word”). It’s a lot to prepare for and he was beautifully prepared. Six years of religious school and one year of Seattle Jewish Community School laid a strong foundation, along with six years in the Northwest Boychoir (because most of the service is sung, and by now anything Jordan can learn by singing he can learn in no time flat). Then for the past six months Jordan has had excellent tutoring by a young man who is an alum of both SJCS and the Boychoir. He also had multiple meetings with the rabbi and cantor to develop his d’var and rehearse it all. With the guidance of all these excellent mentors, and consistent practice supervised by Dale and me, Jordan found himself quite confident and relaxed in the weeks leading up to the event. Here he is looking cool in his new suit, along with his proud brother.

Then, the Tuesday before his bar mitzvah, he got sick – a nasty fever that had him lying on the couch barely moving, and a deep, racking cough. We talked to his doctor, but he said it was almost certainly viral, meaning there was very little to do but wait it out. On Thursday the fever was gone, so we were optimistic that he’d be okay on Saturday.

Jordan's 13th birthday

Jordan had a passionate wish for his birthday this year: He wanted to have laser tag at Gas Works Park, something he remembered fondly from a friend's birthday party a few years ago. You can hire a guy to come out with armaments, train you and your friends, and run various fun games.

I hear they had a total blast. Me, I was picnicking with the grownups on the lawn; it was a beautiful summer day, after all. We guarded the cake. Jordan's design is somewhat similar to last year's. Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of the cake in its final form, with the collection of freestanding fondant people he molded in red and blue. 

Here's most of us at the picnic site.

Entertainingly, on summer Sundays a bunch of knights-in-armor meet up at Gas Works for live action role playing. We enjoyed them after the laser tag was done.