January 24, 2008
My son had stormed out of the chapel leaving the cantor with his jaw dropping, his last melodic correction of my son’s Torah blessing still hanging in the air. By the time I had made my apologies to the cantor, explained to him that my son would not be back to finish the lesson, and completed a quick, sweeping search of the building, my almost 13-year-old had walked almost a mile toward home.
Several months earlier, we had cancelled the party hall and let the caterer go. We recognized that my son’s coming of age would not include the greater community or even extended family and friends. We had resigned ourselves to a small weekday morning service, explaining uncomfortably to confused relatives that we would not be having a big party — or even a small one for that matter.
Still, even the relatively modest ritual we had planned, requiring only five minutes or so in the spotlight, appeared to be too overwhelming for him. I consulted other parents of children with varying forms of mental illness who had somehow managed to stand up on a Monday or Thursday morning and become bar or bat mitzva at the weekday service.
When asked about my son’s resistance, I assured the rabbi that I had in fact explained to him why the bar mitzva was so important to me and my family. I also let the rabbi know that insisting, putting my foot down, had not worked with my son.
I begged, bribed, and finally threatened him, all to no avail. Even when, in a moment of desperation, I told him there would be no more TV in his life from that moment until the day he turned 18 — still, he refused.
Were I less traditional, I would have let go of the whole idea. After all, he had been through so much. Having endured two hospitalizations, the loss of half an academic school year, the effects of ongoing psychotropic medication, countless attempts to work with professionals with whom he felt comfortable, and finally a private school placement — in the shadow of all of that, what was the absence of the bar mitzva? Surely it was understandable; but to me it felt — unacceptable.
Our rabbi phoned and offered assistance but gave no specific suggestions or alternatives. I felt at my wit’s end. I chose to take matters in hand. I decided to create a bar mitzva service for him and hold it in our home.
On the first day of Passover, two days after his Jewish birthday, we held a home-based bar mitzva. His aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents, all of whom had celebrated together at the seder the night before, gathered around the dining room table again to celebrate a different moment of transition in Jewish life.
We sang together and recited a somewhat condensed version of the morning service. My parents presented my son with a tallit that had been handwoven by his 94-year-old great-grandmother, who had been too ill to travel for the seders. When they wrapped him in this tallit, a symbol of all the blessings, hope, and love his great-grandmother and our family have for him, there was barely a dry eye in the room.
He had an aliya along with his two siblings, me, and my husband. Together we stood before our minyan of family members and supported him as he took on the yoke of our heritage and joined us as an adult member of the family. We recited the traditional parents’ blessing, along with the Sheheheyanu prayer, thanking God for allowing us to see this day. After the service we celebrated over chocolate-covered matza and honey cake.
Two weeks later my son did return to that same chapel from which he had fled. This time he stood alone before the Torah and in a loud, clear, and confident voice, sang out the blessings. We again recited the Sheheheyanu prayer, and afterward, members of the daily minyan shook my hand and wished me mazal tov as if my son had just become a bar mitzva — and perhaps for them he had.
But for me, he had become a grown-up member of our faith the moment he agreed to stand up together with us and allowed us to wrap him in the ever-present shawl of our love; for only then did he find his own voice and the strength to stand up alone.