The Hard Taco song for June is called "Our Time Together." No matter what you think of it, I'll still probably do another one next month. So stop acting like you're the one in control here.
I attended a couple of bar and bat mitzvahs in the last few weeks. 10/10 would recommend. The less you know about Jewish services ahead of time, the better. Sit through a bar mitzvah and you will feel like a transfer student at a Martian preschool. The room is full of books, but they are backwards and inside-out, and the head Martian is the only one who can read them. He or she keeps motioning for you to stand up, sit down, bend your knees, kiss a book, or get on your tiptoes. Sometimes, the head Martian covers their own eyes for a few seconds, and then shouts "Amen," which I assume is Martian for "peekaboo."
And then there is the endless chanting; lilting nonsense, often with a call-and-response element. The words are gibberish, but they are repetitive. Or almost repetitive, like they are saying "One, two, three, eyes on me," and the room responds, "One, two, eyes on you."
Okay, let's leave that analogy behind for a minute. The real reason to attend a bar mitzvah is to hear what the kid has to say in English. There's a section toward the end called the D'var Torah, where the 13-year-old tries to explain how a paragraph in a 2500-year-old text relates to their life as a modern American middle-schooler. They don't get to pick which part of the Torah to deconstruct... the passage is chosen for them based on an ancient algorithm that accounts for their birthday, the lunar calendar, the birthdays of other kids who might host competing parties, and, in Ann Arbor, the college football schedule.
The luckiest bar mitzvah kid is the one assigned to a well-worn bible story, such as the exile of Adam and Eve. That D'var Torah practically writes itself.
"In my Torah portion, Bereishit, Eve and Adam eat the fruit, which was against the rules, and God kicks them out of the garden. This applies to our lives, because growing up means making choices and taking responsibility. For me, the forbidden fruit is not doing homework. Even though I hate homework, doing it keeps me from getting kicked out of school, which is a lot like Eden, except that we wear more clothes. Rabbi Blumenstock showed me that when you really think about it, homework is actually important, even though I would love to never do any of it ever."
The first third of the Torah is full of parables and familiar names, covering topics like the creation of the world, Noah's ark, Abraham and his family, baby Moses, Egyptian plagues, the Red Sea, and wandering in the desert. These are chock full of modern lessons.
But after the Golden Calf bit, the Torah kind of loses the plot, and starts to read more like the minutes to a homeowner's association meeting. Highlights include exhaustive instructions about priesthood and tabernacle-building, footnotes about census-taking, and detailed inheritance laws. And this is where the speeches get really interesting.
The bat mitzvah I attended this week had a Torah portion about the appropriate protocol for accusing your wife of adultery. This stuff was unsettling, to say the least. If the husband suspects his wife and has no proof or corroborating witnesses, he brings her to the priest. The priest writes a curse on a scroll, soaks it in some water, adds some dirt from the floor, and makes her drink it. If she is innocent, nothing happens. But if she is guilty? Her thigh will sag and her belly will distend. This is actually what it says... her thigh will sag and her belly will distend.
So how does the eighth-grade student apply all of this to modern life? It usually comes out sounding something like this:
"In my Torah portion, there is a husband who becomes suspicious. Even though I have never accused someone of adultery in a formal priestly setting, suspicion still exists in our modern lives. For example, this reminds me of when my younger brother Evan says he didn't destroy my Minecraft house, even though the lava is still there and he is the only other person on the server. Like the priest in Naso, I want proof. But the priest doesn't just say, "She seems guilty." There is a thing to do to figure it out. In modern life, this means you should not necessarily scream, "You stole my diamonds!" until you check if you accidentally used them to make a hoe, which I have done, and which is also a tragedy.
So I guess the lesson is that when we feel suspicious, we shouldn't jump to conclusions. We should check the server log and maybe build the next base farther away. The Torah reminds us that it's okay to feel upset when Evan gets praised for doing one chore while I have been unloading the dishwasher for years. But becoming a Jewish adult means not letting the jealousy control me and choosing communication over curse water. And Evan, if you did what I think you did, the guilt you feel will be worse than a sagging thigh.
Shabbat Shalom."
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