bar & bat mitzvAH

Dearest one,
I wish you the strength to face challenges with confidence along with the wisdom to choose your battles carefully. I wish you adventure on your journey and may you always stop to help someone along the way. Listen to your heart and take risks carefully. Remember how much you are loved. I am so proud of you!
-Patsy Gaut

May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face.
The rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand.
May God be with you and bless you.
May you see your children’s children.
May you be poor in misfortune, rich in blessings.
May you know nothing, but happiness from this day forward.
May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the warm rays of sun fall upon your home and may the hand of a friend always be near.
May green be the grass you walk on.
May blue be the skies above you.
May pure be the joys that surround you.
May true be the hearts that love you.
-Author Unknown

I thank you for this wondrous gift of life.
I am humbled by the blessings and responsibilities of parenthood and my participation in the miracle of creation.
May I learn to love without smothering.
May I learn to house without imprisoning.
May I learn to give without imposing.
May I learn to live today, that yesterday and tomorrow might find their own way in the world.
I give thanks to life for the gift of life, and stand in wonder before the awesome task of parenting that lies before me.
Blessed is the way of life that makes parent rejoice with child.
-Rami M. Shapiro

If there is one area that identifies and unites Jews, no matter what their personal beliefs and practices, it is Tzedakah. Tzedakah is more than charity or philanthropy, noble as they are, more than man’s humanity to man, exalted as that is. More truly, it is righteousness and justice. Without these qualities civilization would perish.

It is the highest ideal in Jewish teaching, for it is the highest application of Jewish ethical values. It is Judaism in action, and Judaism is inherently and deeply a religion of action, a way of life, a way of living.
-Philip Bernstein

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
-Marianne Williamson

How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start slowly changing the world! How lovely that everyone, great and small, can make their contribution toward introducing justice straightaway. And you can always, always give something, even if it is only kindness!
-Anne Frank

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them and the point is, to love everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had 3 months to write. It was due the next day.

We were out at our family cabin, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by a binder, paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
-Anne Lamott

Give your children unconditional love, a love that is not dependent on report cards, clean hands, or popularity. Give your children a sense of your whole-hearted acceptance, acceptance of their human frailties as well as their abilities and virtues. Give your children your permission to grow up to make their own lives independent of you. Give them a sense of truth. Make them aware of themselves as citizens of a universe in which there are many obstacles as well as fulfillments. Bestow upon your child the blessings of your faith. These are the laws of honoring your son. Out of these laws will be built the Declaration of Independence for the coming generation, a spiritual and emotional independence that, in turn, will make the world free, democratic, safe, creative.
-Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman

The days come and go. Imperceptibly our lives change. We grow older and hardly aware of it. Our children grow up and we hardly notice. Then, suddenly, we come to a time and we realize that our child is a child no longer. They have become a young adult, ready to take their first step into adulthood.

We are grateful that we have been able to bring them this far. We are thankful for the strength to cope with the stresses and responsibilities of rearing them. And we give thanks for the pleasure and pride we have had in them.

Now we realize they are children no longer. Only another year, two, three and they will begin to go from our homes to find their own way in the world.

We ask ourselves, have we truly prepared them for this? Have we done enough, taught them enough? We are almost afraid to let them go. Yet it was for this that we raised them, that they might grow up to take their places in the world.
-Sidney Greenberg

May the One who blessed our ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, bless our child who has come forward this day to the reading of the Torah in recognition of their desire to live a worthy Jewish life.

May God continue to be with them, in the life before them, just as God has been with them from the day of their birth until now. May it be God’s will that they continue to grow in body and spirit, in wisdom and humility, in the love of all creatures, in faithfulness and courage.

And may they always be regarded as gracious and wise in the eyes of God and all humanity, and let us say, Amen.

Boundless are you, Eternal One our God, Source of all life, who has kept us alive, sustained us and allowed us to reach this occasion.
-Author Unknown

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen of the Ritual Committee:

In June 1975 my daughter Sally will celebrate her thirteenth birthday and expects that she will be a Bat Mitzvah. She would like to have her service on Saturday morning, rather than on Friday night and I believe it only proper that she be permitted to do so.

The religious education which girls receive today is equal to that of the boys. Girls and women are leaders of your organizations, religious schools, countries and everything else that vitally affects our lives and the very existence of Judaism.

Although I recognize the irrational, emotional bases to religious practices, I believe that we as Conservative Jews must change those traditions which are odious to large segments of our people and which have no rational, moral justification for their continuation.

It is a fact of life that women are moving into areas from which they have been traditionally excluded — one of which is the bimah of a Conservative synagogue. A second is to the Torah from which she derives the same law and inspiration as a man. The very fact that there is a variety of opinion among Conservative Jews as to whether or not women should be called to the Torah should make it incumbent upon the Ritual Committee at Temple Shomrei Emunah to follow a course of fairness and equality for all members.

The girls in Montclair are keenly aware of the options allowed the decision makers at their synagogue. They are critically watching to see if the religious rituals at their synagogue are ruled by those who will not relate either to the times or to them or by those who are willing to perhaps suffer some temporary strangeness during a service in order to promote a greater good.

To be sure, Sally will celebrate her Bat Mitzvah — be it on Friday or Saturday. However, this dispute will doubtless continue until the women have prevailed. Meanwhile the traditionalists will constantly be on the defensive and the women and girls will continue to be antagonized and alienated. This issue will not fade away regardless of how much we may wish it to do so. (I have three younger daughters and if this is not resolved now, I am fairly certain that I will be compelled by conscience as well as by them to continue this battle.)

I respectfully request that the members of the Ritual Committee openly look at all aspects of this question—not merely at their reaction based on years of tradition. Above all, ask what effect this is having upon our young girls, who so often hear the comment, “Judaism is outdated and has no meaning for my life today”. Admittedly, calling girls to the Torah will not change everything, but it will certainly help to show that our religion is living, adaptable and subject to modification where the basic moral laws are not jeopardized.

Yours truly,

Paula Gottesman
(Mrs. Jerome W. Gottesman)
-Courtesy of Paula Rachlin Gottesman and Sally Gottesman

I want to apologize to all the women I have called pretty before I’ve called them intelligent or brave.

I am sorry I made it sound as though something as simple as what you’re born with is the most you have to be proud of when your spirit has crushed mountains.

From now on I will say things like you are resilient or you are extraordinary.

Not because I don’t think you’re pretty but because you are so much more than that.
-Rupi Kaur

• Always remember, you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think and twice as beautiful as you ever imagined.
  -Author Unknown
• There are two gifts we should give our children. One is roots and the other is wings.
  -Hodding Carter
• Don’t promise when you’re happy. Don’t reply when you’re angry and don’t decide when you’re sad.
  -Ziad K. Abdelhour
• It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
  -E.E. Cummings
• Respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, grows you or makes you happy.
  -Robert Tew
• The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.
  -Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.
  -Elie Wiesel
• There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
  -Albert Einstein
• Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.
  -Anne Frank
• The hardest of all is learning to be a well of affection and not a fountain, to show children that we love them, not when we feel like it, but when they do.
  -Nan Fairbrother
• Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.
  -Golda Meir
• Look, I really don’t want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you’re alive, you got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around a lot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death.  And therefore, as I see it, if you’re quiet, you’re not living.  You’ve got to be noisy, or at least your thoughts should be noisy and colorful and lively.
  -Mel Brooks