The Bar Mitzvah Class
My Bar Mitzvah Class of 1964, shared on Facebook not long after we all reconnected there 45 years later. The man who posted this, standing in the back, earned a distinguished career, his name appearing on the credits for shows I watched weekly. He also shared photos of his same-sex spouse, a union of thirty years. The young lady, now a respected attorney, would not sit alone in a class of Conservative Jewish boys today. That congregation, in a growth spurt ten years after placement of the building’s cornerstone, reflected a transformation of worship and of work. Neighborhood shuls identified as Orthodox. Conservative synagogues like mine became commuter congregations. The girl’s parents had Hebrew School carpool obligations that Sunday. She arose a little early.
Sixty years have elapsed since the boys captured in that photo entered the world of Bnai Torah. The kiddush cup generously bestowed by the Sisterhood still sits in my breakfront, though its broken stem too expensive to repair. The tefillin we wore came as a bulk Hebrew School purchase for the boys. I lost mine in a snowstorm. Sterling Kiddush cup and tefillin promptly replaced with far less concern for cost than my parents had. It was my duty to have a Kos for Kiddush and tefillin. Imprints of Bar Mitzvah endure. I mastered class lessons and private sessions with the Cantor, taking my turn today in the congregational rotation for Torah reader, Haftarah chanter, and Shacharit leader.
1964, photo and beyond. News came from newspapers and Huntley-Brinkley in Black & White. Beatles would come to Ed Sullivan a few months after that snapshot. None of our parents would allow us on the bimah for our special day with a shaggy mop. New York World’s Fair an hour’s drive from the synagogue. We saw our first Toyota there. Israel would not expand its territory to our Holiest Site for another three years. Months before my Bar Mitzvah, Look Magazine ran its cover story, The Vanishing American Jew. It dominated many Conservative Rabbi’s agendas for years to follow. As Hebrew School pupils, we decoded foreign letters, learned Siddur, read passages of Chumash, and studied a history text. It had sufficient quality to incorporate into our public school bibliographies for selected reports. Israel and Holocaust were not ignored, though not central curriculum elements, as they became for my children. No genealogy units. Most of us knew at least some of our grandparents. They often conveyed stories to us. At Kiddush we mingled with worshipers who had emigrated from Europe. Holocaust survivors had their presence. But an optimistic future, one of elite college, professional prosperity, with our Judaism part of the rising American experience dominated the message. Offering female classmates an aliyah, or even a ceremony on Shabbat morning instead of Friday’s Kabblat Shabbat had not even reached the idea phase. She was there to enable her parents to get the male neighbors to their class on time.
When Facebook reassembled us in 2009, not as a Bar Mitzvah class but as High School alumni, our Jewish world had transformed enough to make that ordinary class photo a museum artifact. College and professions happened. Those boys include MDs and attorneys, men of business wealth, and two who did not make it to three score and ten. Our daughters have Bnot Mitzvah on Shabbos mornings, often parity with bimah presence. The girl who became a lawyer is no longer an educational outlier. The gay man could bring his spouse to shul if he wished. Look Magazine’s most ominous projections did not happen. Few of us go to shul each week. A few with Christian spouses, even one who posts his elaborate Christmas train display each December, remained unassailably Jewish. The Jewish experience repackaged as did we. Bar Mitzvah sixty years ago, The Jewish Catalog only fifty years ago, the year this class graduated college.
We could and did create our own Jewish menus. Women Rabbi’s, why not? Shun intermarrieds? Played out as ill-advised. A geographically larger and more secure Israel became a personal tour priority. Work for international conglomerates that excluded our parents? Not only that, but get promoted. Live in McMansions that once excluded sales to Jewish buyers in the deed? Some of us do.
Despite this expansion of participation, laudable as it seems, the institutions that enabled it have often entered a descent phase of their life cycles. My congregation closed in 2006, sliding from two Bar Mitzvah each Shabbos morning through the school year plus three Bnot Mitzvah a month, to zero young people in the sanctuary on my last Shabbat morning there when visiting the area. We had high school reunions along the way, all on Saturday nights. I was the only one who had attended services that morning, ate very selectively from the buffet, and wanted the DJ to toss in a medley of Bar Mitzvah music. And we parked our modern, sturdier Toyotas than the ones on display at the World’s Fair Pavilion in the hotel’s parking lot. We remained loyal to our Jewish imprints. Some belonged to synagogues. Some had daughters they had prepared for Bat Mitzvah and funded through medical school. We found a more secure Israel, one we helped fund with Kol Nidre Bond purchases. That Bar Mitzvah class generated proteges. A brief passage between Ayn Kelokeinu and Aleynu made its play on words, Al tikra Bawnaich Ela Bonayich, don't read it as your sons but as your builders. Your builders are more important than your sons. We were groomed as sons in that photo. However, enough of us became the Builders. Even those whose tefillin got lost without replacement. Sixty years later, amid a Judaism of institutional entropy, those boys, and their excluded female classmates, irrespective of any retained synagogue skills, have established our own acceptance into the American identity mosaic, We bring parity to those who once could not enter, whether the girl or the still hidden declared gay pre-teen. Look Magazine got it wrong. The Jewish Catalog creation Judaism a la carte scored much higher.
Mitzvah Class