Customary/Ritual
Jewish 13th Birthday
Susanne Sherman
Seattle, WA.
November 3rd, 2020
Informant Data:
Susanne was born in Czechoslovakia in 1935 in a Jewish family of four and moved to Seattle, WA to escape persecution during WWII. She moved with her sister and parents, arriving with little belongings. Susanne graduated from the University of Washington in 1957 and worked as a speech pathologist for her entire career. After her husband’s passing, she raised her three kids alone for several years before remarrying. She is now retired and lives in a suburb of Seattle.
Contextual Data:
Cultural Context: In the Jewish culture, the 13th birthday is the age at which boys and girls host a bar or bat mitzvah, a coming of age ceremony. This ceremony represents the transition to religious adulthood. This event consists of both formal and informal rituals and ceremonies. After completion of the bar/bat mitzvah, the boy or girl is considered a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ and is expected to continue actively participating in Jewish rituals going forward.
Social Context: There are several important aspects of the bar mitzvah: the night-before dinner with close family, the official bar mitzvah ceremony, and the celebration after the ceremony. During the night-before dinner, the entire extended family comes together to celebrate the bar mitzvah and bequest significant gifts to the bar mitzvah. This is a more intimate celebration than the one that occurs after the ceremony. During the official ceremony itself, the bar mitzvah recites the Torah portion he/she has been practicing for months or years in advance to demonstrate their dedication to the Torah. They then give their modern interpretation of the portion in front of the entire audience, which can be hundreds of people. The bar mitzvah wears formal clothes, often with a Tallit (shawl) or kippah (small circular hat for boys). The celebration afterward consists of a night of food and dancing with all family and friends of the bar mitzvah. Often, classic Jewish dances are spread throughout the party. Friends and family usually bring gifts for the new adult, either something physical of significance or money.
Item:
All of Susanne’s children and grandchildren have held bar or bat mitzvahs when they turned thirteen. For their formal outfits, all three used her same Tallit during the ceremony which had been passed down to her from her parents and has recently been passed down to one of her grandchildren. In addition to this common Jewish article of clothing, almost every monetary gift she, her children, or her grandchildren received was an amount that was a multiple of $18, such as $36, $72, or $180. She said that the number eighteen represents life in the Jewish culture, so the gift in that multiple represents giving the new adult life. In all the post-ceremony celebrations she has attended, she recalls that at one point, the Horah was performed, which is where the bar mitzvah gets lifted into the air on a chair and the people dance around them in a circle. She notes that this dance is rooted in marriage ceremonies, but because of how enjoyable the dance is, it has spread to other celebrations in Jewish culture, such as the bar mitzvah.
Mitchell Meade
Hanover, NH
Dartmouth College
RUSS 13 Fall 2020