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FATHERS AND SONS: RETHINKING THE BAR MITZVAH  
AS AN AMERICAN RITE OF PASSAGE

SIMON J. BRONNER

The bar mitzvah draws popular as well as folkloristic attention because it is  
one of the few publicly recognized American rituals for entering adolescence. 
Popularly categorized as a Jewish folk tradition, the bar mitzvah is hardly a private 
affair; it is recognized, if not participated in, throughout the general population of 
North America as a result of being featured in popular films, television shows, and 
novels. Some of the notice for the bar mitzvah owes to depictions in the media of 
material excess. Additionally, the bar mitzvah raises a social psychological question 
of the relatively early coming of age at thirteen years old. The age is perceived as 
early in a modern American society characterized by an extended childhood and 
adolescence before adulthood. Elaborating on this critical coming-of-age issue, I 
propose that the folk sources of the bar mitzvah reveal a symbolism that suggests 
the ceremony acts to resolve father-son conflicts. Further, in the American context 
both non-Jews and Jews have heightened the ceremony’s importance because  
the event represents public displays of, or compensations for, uncertain  
masculine status.

Problem Statement and Background: The Folk and Popular Logic  
of Bar Mitzvah

The bar mitzvah is the coming-of-age ritual that everyone knows, in image if  
not in practice. If one has never attended the event, he or she probably has been 
exposed to it in popular television and film. Jonathan and Judith Pearl, discussing 
media portrayals of Jewish themes in The Chosen Image (1999), claim that “of all 
the Jewish rites of passage depicted on popular TV, none has received more 
attention than the bar mitzvah” (Pearl and Pearl 1999, 16). Since their book has 
come out, the bar mitzvah has been dramatized, or spoofed, in popular movies 
such as Glow Ropes: The Rise and Fall of a Bar Mitzvah Emcee (2005), Keeping Up 
with the Steins (2006), Sixty Six (2006) Knocked Up (2007), and Two Lovers (2008), 
and television series such as Entourage (2005), Sex and the City (2000), Frasier 
(2002), The Simpsons (2003), Unfabulous (2005), and Naked Brothers Band (2008). 
It has been the butt of many jokes and cartoons among Jews and non-Jews  
alike, many of which concern the apparently young age, 13, when the boy is 
pronounced to be entering manhood or which question the Jewish boy’s claim to 
manliness. In the Naked Brothers Band episode “The Bar Mitzvah,” for example, 
wordplay is evident when a parent commands the bar mitzvah boy to join his 
friends with the Yiddish word gey meaning “go,” but the Americanized boy 
understands the word as questioning his masculinity for acting “gay.” Related to 
this humor in a surfeit of comic graphics and mocking photographs is the common 
theme of discomfort for the boy in the fabled misfitting bar mitzvah suit. The 
humor depends on the perception that the Jewish boy is uncomfortable in, or not 
ready for, the commanding pose of an adult suit.

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The kind of bar mitzvah commanding popular culture attention is likely of 
non-pietistic Jews, often called liberal or assimilated. In such satirical portrayals, 
viewers become aware of anxieties, not just for the bar mitzvah boy’s relation to 
his faith or ethnicity, but also for the modern consumer society of which he is 
a part. Depictions of the bar mitzvah in popular culture focus primarily on the 
party because of the broader societal interest in modern materialism, or parental 
indulgence, that it raises, but contextualizing the celebration within traditional 
practices and symbols for the bar mitzvah boy leading up to, and during, the event 
sheds light on the inherited, and invented, meanings for the bar mitzvah. To get at 
these meanings, I will examine more closely the folk cultural aspects of the event 
to explain its growing appeal since the mid-twentieth century.

The folk cultural source of the bar mitzvah appears rooted in synagogue 
practice. Along these lines, Jewish parents will probably voice the attitude that the 
bar mitzvah is the most self-conscious expression of Jewishness in one’s life and 
understand that it signifies entrance into what is known as religious majority: the 
ability associated with Jewish maturity to participate in a minyan (quorum of 10 
for prayer), fast, and read from Torah. Orthodox Jews may more clearly recognize 
the obligations it represents to Judaism to put on tallit (prayer shawl) and tefillin 
(phylacteries), but the bar mitzvah in Orthodox communities does not have the 
conspicuous consumer display that it does among liberal Jews. For many Jews, it 
signals a finality rather than a transition to another stage; it is an end rather than 
a beginning of religious participation. Ivan Marcus writing on the Jewish life cycle 
observes that the bar mitzvah “can be seen as a finishing rite for many young 
Jewish adolescents. It moves the child from Judaism into the larger world possibly 
without any additional traditional Jewish rites until death, if then” (2004, 123). 

That a traditional ceremony would contribute to discontinuity rather than 
the continuity expected of rites of passage has not only been a concern of 
historians and ethnographers. American rabbis since the early twentieth century 
have complained about the use of the bar mitzvah to conclude synagogue 
attendance. Rabbinical philosopher Mordecai Kaplan during the 1930s, for 
example, in his incisive tome Judaism as a Civilization: Toward a Reconstruction 
of American-Jewish Life (1934) criticized the “spiritual chaos” caused by “so 
casual a contact with Jewish knowledge” in short-lived attendance at a Hebrew 
school before the bar mitzvah (Kaplan 1994, 58). Although acknowledging that 
the Jewish educational focus on preparing for the bar mitzvah kept youth in 
Jewish schools, he advocated for a reorientation to signal entrance into a new 
stage of life or developing a life-long commitment to Judaism (Kaplan 1994, 58-
59). A later popularly known rabbi, Joseph Telushkin, renewed the complaint 
in Jewish Literacy (1991) by stating, “While the bar mitzvah is intended to mark 
the beginning of a Jewish boy’s adulthood, for non-Orthodox Jews it frequently 
signifies the end of his Jewish education” (1991, 612). 

Surveys by Jewish organizations of their youth members verify that children 
perceive the bar mitzvah to be a conclusion to education rather than a transition 
to another stage. Barry A. Kosmin found, for instance, for the bar/bat mitzvah 
that less than a quarter of Conservative Hebrew school students showed a high 
score on their plans for attending synagogue monthly or more after the bar/bat 

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mitzvah (2002, 263). Despite the intentions of this minority, actual attendance 
was even lower, and this disengagement is typically blamed on teens focusing 
on secular high school studies and extracurricular activities with the support of 
their parents (Leneman 1993, 17-19; Sidlofsky 1993, 302). A higher percentage of 
boys go through a bar mitzvah than girls for the bat mitzvah, and the boys report 
feeling pressure more intensely to disengage from religious activities in favor of 
weekend sports and social activities. Of the b’nai mitzvah students, girls having 
gone through bat mitzvah were more likely to volunteer in the Jewish community 
and attributed more importance to being Jewish than did the bar mitzvah boys 
(Kosmin 2002, 253). 

Although civic leaders often point to the structure of American Hebrew school 
education for the rise of the bar mitzvah, rabbis and educators alike insist that 
Jewish education is geared toward wider goals and the bar mitzvah ceremony 
involves an important (and to some the most important) secular component. In 
light of the disappointing effects of the bar mitzvah on religious maintenance 
and coming of age transition, the most common alternative explanation is family 
socialization and community networking it provides (Davis 1995, 2003; Kennedy 
2005; Schoenfeld 1993b). Kosmin’s statistics lead him to consider the familial 
bonding of the bar mitzvah in light of the uncertainty of holding a Jewish wedding 
in the life cycle of the boy for the continued appeal of the bar mitzvah, despite 
criticisms of the bar mitzvah by rabbis for undermining their religious purpose 
and by civic leaders for being too materialistic and competitive. Basing his view 
on the observation that “for many couples it is the first major family and social 
event since their own wedding,” Kosmin hypothesizes that the bar mitzvah is a 
developmental milestone for the parents who “must present themselves publicly in 
relation to their religious tradition to the most significant people in their lives–their 
family, colleagues, and social network” (2000, 236). There is merit in this argument 
because of the background of social and economic anxieties for many liberal 
Jews of on the one hand, appearing integrated into the larger society, and on the 
other, of validating their commitment to Jewish identity among members of their 
religious group. Yet a closer look at the ceremony reveals that the ritual portions 
of the bar mitzvah feature the relationship of the father and son, rather than the 
whole family. 

Related to the question of the bar mitzvah’s modern appeal is its historical 
trajectory since the early twentieth century. Although popular culture may present 
the bar mitzvah as an ancient Jewish rite, its tradition is of relatively recent origin. 
Many scholarly observers have editorialized that its rise among the people of the 
book is remarkable considering there is no mention of the ritual in its sacred texts 
of Torah or Talmud. The term bar mitzvah, or son of the commandment, appears 
in the Talmud (BM 96a) for a person subject to law, but it does not appear in 
reference to assuming religious obligations before the fifteenth century (Chill 1979, 
315). The scholarly consensus is that as a ceremony it dates to local medieval 
German practices which diffused to eastern Europe, but there it did not gain 
the elevated or standardized status now given it in western Europe and America 
(Abrahams 1958, 32; Marcus 1996, 119-26; Marcus 2004, 82-123; Pollack 1971,  
59-62). 

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The key components of the derashah, or interpretive speech, and examination 
drew significant notice in eighteenth century Italy, and it may be from there that 
the ritual made some inroads into north African Jewry (Goldberg 2003, 90-91; 
Ouaknin and Ménager 2005, 335-39). Yet in the substantial Jewish communities 
of Yemen it did not develop at all (Ouaknin and Ménager 2005, 342-43). It is 
also noteworthy that in North Africa, religious majority could be reached any 
time the boy was ready, and among Indian Jews it occurred around five years 
old (Goldberg 2003, 92). The historical explanation of a German-Italian influence 
is often accompanied by speculation on the rise of the bar mitzvah rituals as 
local imitations of Christian confirmation practices, whether out of interests of 
assimilation or modernization (Marcus 2004, 109-13; Schauss 1950, 120-21). Well 
into the twentieth century, Judaism’s rabbinical annals observed that the bar 
mitzvah was a fading tradition or one that the rabbis should eradicate because it 
challenged elite notions of Judaism (Silverman, Morris 1932, 329-31). A leading 
authority for Orthodox Jewry in North America, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (1895-
1986), for example, publicly declared, “If I had the power, I would abolish the bar 
mitzvah ceremony in this country…It is well known that it has brought no one 
closer to study or observance” (Sherwin 1990, 150). For notable modern Jewish 
historians such as Jenna Weissman Joselit, the triumph of the bar mitzvah over this 
rabbinical resistance is the example par excellence of a singular American culture 
within the wider Jewish world. It demonstrates the ascendancy in the United States 
of the creative, upwardly aspiring folk interested in accommodating modernity over 
the elite hegemony of the ancients in the stodgy synagogue (Joselit 1994, 89-118).

Sociological and psychological inquiries have underscored the way the bar 
mitzvah involves the family and could be used therapeutically to link generations 
and create community (Davis 1995, 2003; Kennedy 2005; Schoenfeld 1993b). 
Certainly the bar mitzvah can take on a different character depending on the 
family dynamic, but the unanswered question remains after examining these 
findings about the centrality of the father-son relationship despite growing 
egalitarianism and feminization in Judaism. The sociopsychological interpretations 
positing a social bonding function are not that much different from the folk view 
that the bar mitzvah is something that each family wants to make its own while 
still showing fidelity to tradition. Logically, the bonding is a consequence rather 
than a source of the ceremony.1 This folk view has been contrasted, particularly 
in religious literature, with elite pressures of rabbinical leaders to maintain the bar 
mitzvah’s synagogue function of encouraging participation in the minyan (Kosmin 
2002, 239-41; Liebman 1973; Schoenfeld 1993a). 

The implication of the functionalist analysis is that the bar mitzvah persists 
because it provides benefits to participants, but the bar mitzvah has raised 
conflicts in the Jewish community and surveys affirm the tremendous pressures 
that preparation for the event raises. Folklorists and ethnologists for their part 
have emphasized the expressive ritual components of the bar mitzvah as a Jewish 
version of global pubertal ceremonies. The bar mitzvah is cited most commonly in 
folkloristic textbooks and reference works as a prominent coming-of-age “rite of 
passage” evident in western industrialized countries (Haskell 1996, 410; McKeever-
Furst 1992, 29; Smith, Robert 1972, 165; Spiro 1977). Folklorists and ethnologists 

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are eager to include this example probably because few public coming-of-age 
rituals exist in America and Europe to compare to the anthropological haul of 
so-called primitive puberty initiations that draw attention to themselves as exotic, 
sexually tinged practices of public transition to adulthood (Raphael 1988; Spiro 
1977). The bar mitzvah lacks this sexual undertone, it seems, but it burst on the 
American scene at a time when industrialized countries were extending childhood 
and becoming aware of adolescence as a distinct stage of life (Russ 1993). This 
coincidence is apparent in the connection of the bar mitzvah to rites of passage 
although a correlation cannot be established because of its pre-modern existence. 
The bar mitzvah conceptualized as a rite of passage shows folk tradition to be 
socially functional, presumably needed to mark passage from childhood into 
adulthood. Jewish educator Jack D. Spiro summarizes this view when he states, 
“The process itself may consume most of childhood, but the initiation rite is a form 
of ‘cultural compression,’ when all that is learned is compressed in the rituals. The 
compression itself focuses on the new roles that must be assumed by the initiate 
as he enters into the realm of manhood” (Spiro 1977, 394). For Spiro, this process 
is common among rites of all societies, but what is distinctive in Jewish culture 
is “the high degree of emphasis on learning, the paramountcy of knowledge and 
understanding” (1977, 399). Thus manhood is attained along with Jewish identity, 
he concludes, through the rite of passage, although he has difficulty reconciling 
the “long, arduous intellectual process” of preparation with the relatively short 
“transition” phase on the big day. 

A logical problem with the demarcation line for Jewish male passage is the 
fixed age of thirteen years old. Biblical sources, for instance, cite twenty as a 
legal adult age and do not prescribe rituals for puberty. One can join the minyan 
without being bar mitzvah and could celebrate bar mitzvah at other ages and 
localities. Jewish folklorist Hayyim Schauss hypothesizes that thirteen became 
ritually significant not because of a developmental stage it marked but because 
“thirteen was a sacred number among the Jews in ancient times” (Schauss 1950, 
113). He speculates that the designation of twenty for maturity was a later 
development, “when a more advanced legal system was in force among Jews” 
(Schauss 1950, 113). If a sacred number was applied, however, it would probably 
be eighteen after the mystical numerological equivalent of chai (consisting of 
the Hebrew letters of het and yod) for “living” (indeed, at bar mitzvahs today, 
common cash gifts are denominations of eighteen to signify good luck). And in 
fact, Rabbi Stuart Rosenberg (1923-1990), spiritual leader of Canada’s Jews, writing 
in the influential journal Religious Education on the “right age for Bar Mitzvah” 
advocates for reforming the bar mitzvah tradition by holding it for boys at the age 
of eighteen (Rosenberg 1965). Other liberal rabbis in the twentieth century tried 
to replace the bar mitzvah with a confirmation ceremony at fifteen or sixteen, to 
keep children in Jewish education longer and to align it with an age perceived to 
be more of a coming-of-age period (as in the popular girls’ celebration of “sweet 
sixteen”), but the efforts have been largely unsuccessful (Joselit 1994, 105-30).

Looking to ancient sources for the entrenchment of thirteen in the Jewish 
ritual cycle, folklorist Theodor Gaster was concerned that correlation was difficult 
because neither a pubertal or sacramental rite appears at thirteen in sacred texts. 

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Its cultural significance, he offered, was in being the traditional age for marriage 
in the ancient Near East (1980, 68). The Mishnah, however, gives the expected 
age for marriage as eighteen, preceded by stages of study beginning “at five 
years the age is reached for Scripture, at ten for the study of Mishna, at thirteen 
for the fulfilment of the commandments, at fifteen for the study of the Talmud, 
at eighteen for marriage, at twenty for seeking at livelihood....” (Pirkei Avot 
5:25; see Hertz 1945, 101-3). In this interpretation, thirteen is the appropriate 
age for understanding and enacting commandments in an educational life cycle, 
even though various rabbinical authorities have countered that it is too young 
(Rosenberg 1965). Rather than viewing a religious significance to the bar mitzvah 
because of the sacredness of the number, Gaster observed that the bar mitzvah 
is a custom without meaning; he thought of it in the modern era as an occasion 
for a party without spiritual or developmental importance. Reflecting a common 
rabbinical attitude of “elite” Judaism, Gaster in his influential survey of Jewish 
folklife disparaged the bar mitzvah by concluding, “It confers nothing, imparts 
nothing, creates nothing; it merely celebrates” (Gaster 1980, 67). 

“Merely celebrates”? What about bar mitzvah as rite of passage? Ivan Marcus 
hypothesizes that “In recent times, as Jews sought to mark the life cycle in ritual 
ways even in lives not otherwise filled with Torah observance, the bar mitzvah 
emerged as a rite of passage from Jewish childhood into adolescence and 
acculturation into the larger secular world, especially in American or Israeli life” 
(2003, 123). The reference to “rite of passage” declares its function of moving from 
one stage to another thought to be universally containing a structure of separation, 
transition, and incorporation by French folklorist Arnold van Gennep in 1908. It 
should be pointed out that although van Gennep as a scholar of religion knew 
about the bar mitzvah, the event is totally absent from his foundational book 
Rites de Passage, and in texts such as Gaster’s and the Encyclopedia Judaica it is 
labeled a ceremony that is not about transition to adulthood as much as either a 
celebration of the conclusion of Hebrew education or a display of commitment 
to Judaism (Gaster 1980, 66-77; Kaplan and Roth 1972). For psychologist Jacob 
Arlow the bar mitzvah also has educational more than developmental significance. 
He calls it an “ordeal by recitation,” linking it to nineteenth-century educational 
tests establishing the authority of the patriarchal synagogue (1951, 357). Spiro 
agrees, pointing out, “The boy is on trial, perhaps not the kind of trial involved 
in walking over hot coals. But it is an intellectual trial, no less traumatizing as 
he stands before relatives and authorities to demonstrate his skill, ability, and 
knowledge of Torah and Jewish law. ‘It is, in essence, an academic degree’” (1977, 
397). Ivan Marcus observes that “there is a culmination in the bar mitzvah as well 
as a celebration of youth. It often is the end of a Jewish child’s formal Jewish 
schooling, his or her graduation” (2004, 122). Anthropologist Harvey Goldberg 
in his comparative survey of Jewish rituals surmises that this association with 
examination and graduation is grounded in the bar mitzvah’s evolution out of an 
educational context. In his view, the bar mitzvah displaced the common ritual of 
entering religious education with one to mark its end. Part of the rationale is that 
the transition of thirteen is one from elementary school to higher education of bet-
ha-midrash. 

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Part of the problem with the bar mitzvah as a rite of passage is how van 
Gennep’s structural order for moving from one stage to another of separation, 
transition, and incorporation applies to the event. One would expect much 
transition in a coming-of-age practice, but the bar mitzvah involves an inordinately 
long preparation time, typically starting as early as three years old. The bar 
mitzvah is not separated during the event and is not presented as liminal. The bar 
mitzvah’s central task is to read a Torah portion and provide a speech rather than 
engaging in an initiatory act with male elders. As an incorporation, as sociologist 
Judith Davis noted, it struggles to mark a change in status or passage to another 
stage. Adult privileges outside of congregational life are not granted, and for most 
children, it is something that parents plan for them. It is therefore in practice a 
milestone rather than an initiation.

I contend that meanings exist often outside the awareness of the participants 
that contributed to its spread in folk Judaism since the mid-twentieth century in 
western Europe and America. My evidence comes from participation in a number 
of ceremonies, symbolic reading of liturgical texts, a survey of former b’nai 
mitzvah, and a content analysis of derashah, the interpretive bar mitzvah speeches 
the boys make. Using developmental psychology and historical context in the mid-
twentieth-century crisis of masculinity, I will provide a folkloristic explanation of 
why the bar mitzvah rose to its present status. I look at it as an invented milestone 
tradition that has dealt with father-son conflicts as the boy deals with the uncertain 
status of his masculinity in a wider modern context. 

Identification: Preparation, Fasting, Separation, and Recitation

Let me review the components of the bar mitzvah. Most Jewish educators and 
synagogue administrators encourage participation in Hebrew School beginning 
with the Aleph grade coinciding with kindergarten age as preparation for bar 
mitzvah by being able to read and chant Biblical Hebrew, recite prayers, and 
participate in congregational life. The bar mitzvah is treated as a culmination of 
one’s education demonstrated by reading from the Torah and a speech. In the 
days before the bar mitzvah, no special events are planned, although in some 
communities, the boy may wear tefillin all day, get his hair cut or shaved off,  
or fast. 

The ritual fast for the boy usually occurs on the Yom Kippur before his bar 
mitzvah, and it is distinguished from the fasting he may do with adults afterward 
by lasting until Chatzot (midday as defined by Halakhah or practical Jewish law). 
Rather than being prescribed in Torah, the transitional fast for the boy before his 
bar mitzvah on the Day of Atonement arose apparently as a folk custom in the 
modern period.2 It may be based on the examples of the father’s obligations to 
train a Jewish child mentioned in the Talmud, which include partial fasting on 
Yom Kippur after the age of nine years old (Shulem and Koenigsberg 2007). Yet 
Halakhah calls for fasting as a commandment after the bar mitzvah, with special 
reference to the symbolism of pubic hair growth for maturity: “a boy of thirteen 
and one day who have brought forth two hairs” is considered adult “with regard 
to all of the commandments and must complete the fast as an obligation from 

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the Torah, but if they have not brought forth two hairs then they are regarded as 
minors and complete the fast as a rabbinical obligation only” (Krieger 2006). The 
significance of the occasion of Yom Kippur for the fast on special occasions is that 
it symbolizes a death and rebirth, divesting the individual of his or her previous 
life (Linke 1999, 149). The fast and wearing the white robe traditionally donned 
on Yom Kippur and burial at the end of life will be reenacted, for example, on the 
wedding day along with the same confessional prayers that are said on the holiday 
and at a death bed. The process therefore ritually confronts mortality, which, 
according to clinical psychologist Stuart Linke, “returns us to our core values and 
enables us to perceive ourselves more deeply” (1999, 149). 

On its surface, the ritual fast before bar mitzvah appears to be preparation 
for the obligations that the boy will accrue after reaching the age of religious 
majority. Although fasting on Yom Kippur marks adult practice, the suffering 
it brings, even for the outcome of atonement, hardly could be considered a 
motivator to push on with the home stretch of bar mitzvah preparations, unless 
it is intentionally uncomfortable to metaphorically focus the bar mitzvah as an 
“ordeal,” as psychologist Jacob Arlow points out (1951, 357). If so, then it is a 
risky metaphor of pain and hunger to impose, if as Arlow argues, the period 
before the bar mitzvah “becomes the occasion for rebellion against the parents. 
The boy, for various reasons, may refuse to participate in the entire process and 

Figure 1. Sephardic bar mitzvah ceremony, Brooklyn, New York, 1998. Photograph 
by Simon J. Bronner.

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may repudiate his parents’ authority as represented by the need to go through 
the Bar Mitzvah initiation” (1951, 356). But a symbolic rationale outside of the 
awareness of the participants may be at work to explain why it is important in 
the custom (apparently in defiance of Halakhic authority) to fast rather than other 
mitzvot the boy will practice after turning thirteen. One possible connection in 
religious scholarship is that the sacrifice of fasting is accepted as a purificatory rite 
and declaration of faith because it is followed by a joyous feast (Farrell 1985). On 
the high holy day of Yom Kippur, fasting after the New Year is followed by an 
occasion for a social “breaking the fast,” as it is called in North American locales. 
Occurring during the first Jewish month of Tishrei (from the root for “beginning”), 
the purificatory fast marks a fresh start in the ritual year. Is the comparison being 
made between the enforced fast before the bar mitzvah, then, and the bar mitzvah 
in which the immaturity and irresponsibility of childhood are ritually replaced with 
adult religious obligations, and encouraged by the festive meal? 

If so, the comparison seems strained between the deprivation of food in 
fasting and the central recitation and discourse at the bar mitzvah ceremony. Both 
actions do have something in common, however, in their arousal of parental 
attention, and this clue may lead to an explanation of the tradition. My argument 
hinges on the symbolism of fasting in many religious contexts as the maternal 
provision of food pointed out by theorists of ritual (Dundes 2002; Farrell 1985, 
254). Anthropologist Eileen Farrell, for example, suggests that fasting representing 
birth or infancy in ritual time “evokes the most primitive wish-fulfillment of all, 
the moment when the hungry infant regains its mother’s breast” (1985, 254). 
It is symbolically consistent, therefore, that fasting as a reminder of infantile 
dependence on the mother’s sustenance is accompanied by prohibitions on adult 
male activities of shaving and “seminal pollution” (Trachtenberg 1979, 212). With 
fasting often occurring during periods of mourning, representing, according to 
Theodor Gaster, “the state of suspended animation which ensues at the end of a 
life lease” (1961, 29), it offers a separation from the mother that allows transition 
and growth. In other words, a previous state or life is being let go and a new one 
is being embraced. As with other symbolic practices, oral activity is associated 
with maternal attributes (such as the Jewish folk term mameloshn for “mother 
tongue” or folk language) that leads to patriarchal reading or codification (such 
as Pirkei Avot, literally “chapters of the fathers or patriarchs,” or idiomatically as 
“Ethics of the Fathers,” which is a significant tractate of the Mishnah composed by 
male rabbis). At Yom Kippur and other religious occasions where a connection to 
God is being made, part of that transition is making a transfer from the physical 
dependence on the mother to spiritual guidance from the father (see Smith, W. 
Robertson 1907, 51-53). Worshippers in the traditional Jewish liturgy thus speak 
of God in the central prayer of the Amida as “our God and God of our Fathers, 
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” Even with revision 
of liturgies to reflect egalitarianism, the principle holds, as articulated by folklorist 
Alan Dundes, that “if an infant associates feeling hunger pangs with the coming of 
an adult parent or parent-surrogate, then the adult who wants a deity to approach 
must clearly make himself hungry. Moreover, the hungrier he is, the more likely it 
is that the parent-deity will approach” (2002, 9), and that parent as authority will 

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likely be patriarchal. Many Midrashic legends underscore the idea that matriarchal 
intervention brings the patriarchal God closer. A popular narrated example is of 
the Jewish matriarch Rachel, frequently depicted as the compassionate mother 
weeping for her captured children, who the Midrash recounts arising from her 
grave and imploring God’s clemency for the Israelites driven into captivity. Rachel 
points out her self-abnegation and thereupon God promises her the restoration 
of Israel (Rothkoff 1972, 1489). She also shows up in modern wartime legends 
protecting Israeli male soldiers from terrorist harm in campaigns outside their 
borders (Wagner 2009).

In line with the symbolism of fasting as separation from the mother to invite 
the father-deity, the spread of the pre-bar-mitzvah fast begins to make sense. A 
question that is often posed about the bar mitzvah is how it acts as a coming-of-
age ritual if the mother associated with childhood is absent from the supposed 
rite of passage. The answer is that the separation occurs before the ceremony 
beginning with the ritual fast, and the transition from physical dependence to 
spiritual awareness continues into the ritualized haircut and acquisition of tefillin. 
The task of the ceremony on the big day then becomes through reading and 
discourse to accentuate the role of the father-deity. Still remaining to be resolved 
is the relationship of the familial father who had been an authority over as well 
as provider for the boy. It appears that the rabbi and cantor can act as spiritual 
surrogates for the father who allow the boy to separate from familial paternity. Still 
complicating this ritualistic scenario connected to traditional cognitive categories 
held in Judaism is modern awareness of changing gender roles, especially in 
relation to the boy’s understanding of “becoming a man,” where intellect in the 
Jewish ceremony rather than bodily strength is being used as a ritual measure  
of masculinity.

The ceremony begins with the boy going to the bimah (reader’s stand) to 
recite standard blessings over the Torah that would be heard on any occasion the 
Torah is read. According to Spiro’s ethnography of the event, “the boy separates 
himself from his mother, from his childhood, as he walks to the altar of the 
synagogue,” where he is “wrapped in his ‘tallit’ and surrounded by the males 
who will read with him” (1977, 398). Traditionally, women do not wear a tallit 
and do not participate on the bimah. The mother is a spectator while the father 
takes a prominent position at the platform with his son. Unlike preparations for 
other readings of the Torah, the father recites a short prayer, Barukh shepetarani 
meonsho shel zeh, after the son’s conclusion of the second blessing. This blessing 
is unique to the bar mitzvah; it is not said for the daughter at the bat mitzvah. 
The translation is “Blessed be He, Who has now rid (or freed) me from the 
responsibility or punishment for this one.” Rabbinical literature suggests two 
interpretations from the source of the benediction in the Midrash (a compilation 
of commentaries on the Hebrew Bible) commenting on the phrase, “And the boys 
grew up’ (Gen. 25:27). One is that the father was punished when his son sinned, 
for he failed to raise him properly, and the other is that the son was punished 
for the sins of his father (Nulman 1993, 91-92). Whichever interpretation one 
argues, the common thread is that the opening of the ceremony is thematized 
in relation to a father-son conflict. Unlike other blessings, the name of God is 

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omitted from the prayer and the Hebrew word patoor, meaning to exempt or 
rid, conveys a negative connotation of vexation (Arlow 1951, 357).3 With this 
connotation, Jewish historian Cecil Roth contends, the father’s prayer declaring his 
freedom from responsibility for the boy “was considered an integral part of the 
celebration, hardly less than the boy’s own participation in the service” (Roth 1955, 
18; emphasis added).

The conflict resolution in the ceremony is for father and son to part ways, and 
at that moment the boy’s teacher steps in to guide the boy in the reading, either 
the prophetic portion of the week (haftarah) or an entire biblical portion–the 
sidrah. Indeed, the father will often stand off at a distance at that point. Afterward 
the boy presents a speech that interprets a point of Jewish law or interprets the 
weekly Torah portion (parshah). The speech is a narrative that typically follows 
a tripartite structure: (1) a standard opening of “Today I am a man,” followed by 
an expression of gratitude to parents, especially the father, for having raised and 
educated the boy; (2) reference to Biblical sources (a favorite in recorded speeches 
is the sacrifice of Isaac by his father) followed by its application to his own 
conduct or the society; and (3) a promise of allegiance to the Jewish community, 
often accompanied with acknowledgment of the role of the religious leaders who 
helped him to become bar mitzvah (Glazer 1928; Gruberger 1993; Katz 1931). 
At the conclusion of the speech, it is now common among both Ashkenazic and 
Sephardic services for children in the audience to throw candies at the boy. 

After the service, the parents host a seudah mitzvah (festive meal celebrating 
a commandment), and this has expanded into the bar mitzvah party often held in 
a rented hall. Despite harsh criticisms of the party such as that voiced by Rabbi 
Abraham Chill, “The contemporary custom of celebrating the bar mitzvah with 
lavish and ostentatious parties has no basis in Jewish tradition and it is in fact 
contrary to the spirit if not the letter of Jewish law and morality,” the secular 
celebration has grown and featured various themes geared to the boy’s worldly 
interests (Chill 1993, 317). The party has become tightly controlled by party 
planners, but an expectation among the bar mitzvah boy’s male friends is that 
some pranking or even hazing will occur to torment the center of attention and 
provide a test of his toughness. This might include giving the bar mitzvah boy a 
“wedgie” (lifting his underwear so as to grip his genitals or get stuck between the 
buttocks) and doctoring his food and drink. The boys may sit with the bar mitzvah 
on a dais, and frequently they initiate lifting the bar mitzvah on a chair in imitation 
of a wedding custom for the bride and groom. More sedate and official is the ritual 
lighting of candles by family members during the party. 

Among the Sephardim, the donning of tefillin or phylacteries is featured in bar 
mitzvah practices, and families may hold a separate celebration before the bar 
mitzvah called Yom Tefillin. The tefillin are two cubical leather containers with 
attached leather straps. One is worn on the head (shel rosh) while the other is on 
the arm (shel yad); the thongs for shel yad are wrapped seven times around the 
arm while the straps on shel rosh hang loosely behind the head and shoulders like 
hair strands. The cases hold parchments with four biblical passages, expressing 
four basic Jewish precepts–the law of tefillin, recognition of God’s kingship, 
the unity of the Creator, and the exodus from Egypt (Roth 1955, 23). Betrothal 

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is symbolized in the arm thong which is wound three times around the middle 
finger while reciting “And I will betroth thee unto me forever; yea, I will betroth 
thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment and in lovingkindness, and in 
mercy. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness; and thou shalt know the 
Lord” (Hosea 2, 21-22). In keeping with the laying on of tefillin as a male rite, 
the Exodus story encased in the tefillin (Exodus 13:1-10, 11-16) opens with the 
commandment to consecrate to God “every firstborn male” and relates the promise 
of a “land flowing with milk and honey” promised to “your forefathers” (Exodus 
13: 1, 5). Indeed, the text signals a transference from a submissive state of slavery 
under Pharaoh in Egypt to a liberation with the guidance of Moses to the promised 
land. The bearded rabbi in the ceremony takes on the role of teacher Moses 
guiding his flock to be independent (Moses does not enter the land of Israel). The 
ceremony for Yom Tefillin also brings out patriarchal symbolism between father 
and rabbi in their ritual placement of the tefillin or phylacteries on the boy before 
he does it himself. Typically, the father puts one of the cases on the boy’s head, 
representing his education for which he was responsible, and the rabbi works the 
other case on the child’s arm, representing his action (Roth 1955, 22). The boy 
may give a speech then as well as on the Sabbath, and the boy is blessed aloud 
by the congregation. A ritual practice that appears to reinforce the transition from 
father to teacher as patriarch is the boy walking around the assembly with his new 
decorated tefillin bag into which congregants would drop silver coins, which are 
then presented as a gift to the bar mitzvah boy’s teacher (Roth 1955, 22). 

Figure 2. Bar mitzvah boy with tefillin accompanied by father and teachers, 
Brooklyn, New York, 2008. Photograph by Ronnie Habbaz, courtesy of  Ronald  
and Adi Cohen.

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The mother is involved usually in making arrangements for the event, and a 
modern tradition has been for her to weave or present a tallit to the bar mitzvah 
boy. The significance of the tallit is that after his thirteenth birthday, it can be 
worn on the Sabbath in prayer and thus represents his reaching religious majority. 
It is customary to have a formal photo portrait taken of the bar mitzvah boy in his 
tallit as a keepsake to distribute. The mother’s role is what Judith Davis (1995) 
calls the traditional balabosta, translated from the Yiddish as the woman of the 
house with the implication that she has a managerial role to compensate for her 
exclusion from the ceremony. Her management has extended to responsibility 
for the boy’s Jewish education, although the bar mitzvah ceremony conveys the 
frequent fiction that the father has been overseeing the boy’s religious training 
(See Gordon 1959, 58-59). Nonetheless, at the bar mitzvah the father takes center 
stage with his son, until he is moved aside by the supervising rabbi and cantor.

Annotation: Relation of the Bar Mitzvah to Circumcision, Haircutting, 
Wedding, and Examination

In its structure and symbolism, the bar mitzvah can be compared to four separate 
traditions: bris (Yiddish; brit milah in Hebrew) or circumcision, upsherin (Yiddish) 
or the ritual first haircut, the Jewish wedding, and the final examination or 
dissertation. The comparison to the bris comes up in the discourse of the bar 
mitzvah because of its coincidence with the boy’s birthday, which raises images 
of circumcision. Typical is a memoir I collected showing that the bar mitzvah was 
narrated in relation to the bris:

I was constantly reminded that the bar mitzvah was the biggest 
event in my life after my bris. Since the bar mitzvah came around my 
birthday, my mother brought up her memories of the bris and how 
much I’ve grown. She’s always sentimental, you know. My father 
would make a bad joke about it would be just as painful besides 
telling me that another thing that’s the same is that everyone will want 
to hold me. I did think it was funny when he said they’re not talking 
about my pecker when they say, “my how you’ve grown.” 

More official charting of the Jewish boy’s milestones typically involves the bar 
mitzvah’s relation to ritual circumcision. Roth in the mid-twentieth century, for 
example, declares, “In the traditional Jewish scheme, there were three great festive 
occasions in a boy’s life. There was the eighth day after his birth, when he was 
introduced into the Covenant of Abraham. There was the day when he was first 
initiated to study, being taken to synagogue, blessed by the rabbi, and given 
honey to lick from a slate on which letters of the Hebrew alphabet were written, 
as a token that the Torah should be sweet to his mouth all the days of his life. 
And there was the day when he was first considered legally bound to fulfill the 
obligations of Jewish law and practice, and could be regarded as a Bar Mitzvah, 
a ‘child of precepts’” (1955, 15). With the decline of honey licking to mark the 

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start of study among modern liberal Jews, more attention has been focused on the 
continuity in the Jewish life cycle from circumcision to bar mitzvah.

Like the bris, the bar mitzvah is represented as an induction into faith and is 
prescribed in intervals of time: 8 days for the bris and 13 years for the bar mitzvah. 
The bris also centrally involves the father-son relationship, for the father gives 
the child to the mohel (Jewish ritual specialist in circumcision) who circumcises 
the child. Several college students who gave me memoirs of their bar mitzvah 
mentioned that references to the bris were made in pranking by the boy’s friends. 
Connections were made to binding and cutting in the bar mitzvah suit and ritual 
haircut, often accompanied by checking whether the boy has pubic hair despite 
the “damage” done by the circumcision.

Jewish advisers Marc-Alain Ouaknin and Françoise-Anne Ménager connect 
the haircutting to the importance of manhood to a haircutting ritual (upsherin in 
Yiddish and chalakah in Hebrew) that many orthodox communities observe for 
the three-year old boys (2005, 46-48). An educational connection exists because 
the child is expected for the first time to go to school, where he will learn to read 
Hebrew. They find similarities between the attention in the haircutting ritual and 
bar mitzvah (they could extend this comparison to the bris) to the trauma of loss 
and its provision of healing with cultural identity. Both rituals also are replete 
with reminders of masculinity. The haircut distinguishes the boy from the long 
hair of the girl. According to Ouaknin and Ménager, the immersion into books 
is symbolically consistent with the gendering of cutting rituals: “He goes from 
the maternal language, which is oral, to the paternal language, which is written. 
Hebrew also links writing to the paternal language in an extraordinary way. The 
word ‘alphabet’–aleph-bet in Hebrew–is pronounced av and means ‘father’” (2005, 
48). Further underscoring study as intellectual gain to compensate for physical 
loss is a traditional gift in both rituals of a honey cake or sweets shaped like 
letters (Ouaknin and Ménager 2005, 48). In circumcision, haircutting, and bar 
mitzvah rituals, the boy acquires a new ceremonial garment. In the haircutting the 
boy gains a small tallit to wear as an undergarment known as tzitzit (based on 
the commandment in Torah to wear fringes at the corners of garments and also 
meaning “hair”; see Ezekiel 8:3). Tzitzit or braided fringes are attached to the boy’s 
tallit and are often used in the service to touch the Torah as it is carried around 
the synagogue. 

In addition to the larger tallit conspicuously worn over the shoulders at 
prayer, the tefillin adds long strips of leather on the arm and head. The boy 
usually receives the gift of tefillin before the tallit; a common time to present the 
phylacteries is 30 days before the bar mitzvah. This period is related to a monthly 
cycle in the Jewish lunar calendar and is commonly associated with a mourning 
period of shloshim (from the Hebrew for “thirty.”). A mourning period is simulated 
for the passing of youth, and as in the ritual guidelines after burial, hair of the 
family mourners cannot be cut until after the mourning period (usually just before 
the bar mitzvah). “Laying tefillin,” as the act is called involves a form of binding 
because leather cases attached to the leather straps contain Torah passages. 
One that is especially conspicuous is on the forehead with straps hanging down 
over the shoulders in the manner of hair. Rabbis teaching the laying of tefillin 

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will comment on the placement 
on head and arms as committing 
intellect and body to fulfillment of 
commandments. But there is also an 
important connection to the father-son 
relationship. The four passages from 
the Torah on the tefillin parchments 
are teachings the father will address to 
the child and relate to communicative 
skills: Veamarta for you will say, 
Veshinaneta Vedibarta for you will 
repeat and you will speak, Velimadeta 
for you will teach (Ouaknin and 
Ménager 2005, 161-62). Both tefillin 
and tzitzit are symbolically cut to show 
completion by going over the head and 
removing them after prayer (Ouaknin 
and Ménager 2005, 50). 

A ceremonial connection to the 
circumcision at the bar mitzvah is the 
wimpel (from the German Wimpel for 
“flag” or “sash”), a decorated cloth on 

Figure 3. Bar mitzvah studio portrait, 
New York City, 1961.

Figure 4. Judy Goldberg holding a wimpel she made for a bris/bar mitzvah, 
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 2009. Photograph by Simon J. Bronner.

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which the boy is circumcised and later used as a sash to bind the Sefer Torah.4 It 
might be part of a custom at the age of three when the boy is toilet trained. The 
father gets an aliyah (invitation to the altar) and brings his boy with him to the 
bimah to wrap the wimpel around the Torah. Thought to be of German origin 
like the bar mitzvah, the decorated wimpel gains significance because it is was 
used to swaddle the baby boy at his brit milah and represents the covenant with 
a patriarchal figure, as the Hebrew blessing recited by the father reminds the 
gathered group: “Praised by Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who 
has sanctified us by Thy commandments, and hast bidden us to make him enter 
into the covenant of Abraham our father.” The group responds, “As he has entered 
into the covenant, so may he be introduced to the study of Torah, to the wedding 
canopy, and to good deeds.” Based on this text, wimpels are inscribed in Hebrew 
with the following message underscoring the patriarchal line: “(Name of child, 
called) son of (name of father) born under a good constellation on (day of week, 
date, month, year) may he (or may the Lord let him) grow to Torah, marriage, and 
good deeds.” An artist may illuminate the text with related depictions of a Jewish 
wedding under the traditional canopy (huppah); masculine animals such as the 
lion of Judah, eagles, and leopards5; and a boy holding up a Torah commonly 
interpreted as a bar mitzvah scene (Eis 1979, 32; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1977, 18-
19). One way that the bar mitzvah is thematized in the father-son relationship is 
in the transfer of the wimpel. After the circumcision, the wimpel belongs to the 
father, but after the bar mitzvah, possession transfers to the son.

Bar mitzvah (exemplifying the commandment at the bris to “grow to Torah”) 
and wedding are connected in the custom of giving the groom an aliyah the week 
before his wedding to re-enact the call to the bimah at his bar mitzvah. In a sign 
of readiness for marriage, the groom often donates his wimpel to his synagogue 
before the wedding. The covering of the huppah is frequently composed of the 
boy’s bar mitzvah tallit, and the bride will replace it with a larger tallit she has 
woven or purchased for the groom (Marcus 2003. 117). The transfer of the tallit 
(at a critical part of the ceremony, bride and groom are both covered by the tallit 
to symbolize their unity) and the circling of the bride around the groom indicates 
readiness for sexual relations. Practices at the bar mitzvah suggest the metaphor 
of the wedding is used to represent sexual displacement by immersion in books 
rather than sexual awakening. When the boy is called to the bimah at the bar-
mitzvah he is identified as the “Bar Mitzvah Groom” and the Torah is the bride to 
which he is bound. According to Arlow’s description, wedding and bar mitzvah 
are joined in the recitation, because “Throughout his recitation the initiate is 
observed intently as a young man on trial undergoing a very difficult examination. 
A sense of compassionate participation grips the audience, especially the boy’s 
mother” (Arlow 1951, 357). The anticipation can be related to anxiety over sexually 
consummating a marriage; in this case the enactment is displacing the sexuality 
with potency in touching the Torah with a yad, a metal extension in the shape of 
a finger, and the oral recitation. In the tefillin ceremony described previously, the 
boy places the shel yad on the arm and wraps straps that extend from it around 
the middle finger while saying verses referring to betrothal. Although thirteen 
seems young to invoke the metaphor of marriage, Ouaknin and Ménager find 

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evidence for its enactment as compensation for sexually “losing a part of oneself 
through the body” (2005, 46). They argue that “boys lose sperm (wet dreams and 
first masturbation)” at ages that “correspond closely to the time that the losses 
described above are first sustained” (2005, 46). Further, the ejaculatory praxis of 
throwing candies at the bar mitzvah boy resembles the showering of the bride and 
groom after a wedding. 

Arguably, access to Torah is unconsciously equated with access to a woman 
which the father already possesses. Arlow hypothesized that organizing the ordeal 
as an examination is symbolically important because, in his words, “Failing an 
examination, together with the humiliation which the student experiences, is often 
unconsciously equated with being castrated,” and from clinical cases, he argued 
that examiners are identified with the father image of the oedipal phase (Arlow 
1951, 365). To be sure, the bar mitzvah boy is expected to pass the examination 
by his male elders, but more than any other theme, memoirs mention performance 
anxiety about successfully completing the reading and speech under the watchful 
eye of teacher and father. The chanting for the reading is done by rote, and it is 
all the more challenging because of the absence of vowel aids to pronunciation. 
As Ouaknin and Ménager point out, “This means that to learn it, one has to accept 
being part of a tradition. One cannot learn this vowel-less text on one’s own, even 
if one reads and speaks Hebrew fluently” (2005, 63). The process of tradition they 
are referring to involves an oral “handing down” of performative practices from 
male elder to the boy. In this way, the connotation of identity formation at the 
bar mitzvah is prominent because more than a text is being chanted; tradition as a 
sustaining process for the group is being enacted–and honored. 

A lesson of the boy’s ordeal is that being part of the tradition is difficult and 
is administered by the synagogue patriarchy rather than the familial one. The 
following narratives collected from young men who had experienced their bar 
mitzvah five to eight years before bear out these pervasive themes of performance 
anxiety and participation in tradition at the bar mitzvah:

I was nervous beyond words. The cantor tried to calm me by telling me 
it was my special day, but that made me only feel worse. I felt that all 
eyes were on me and I could never be ready in time. I felt that my voice 
was going to crack at any moment. It’s different from show and tell in 
school, because it was so formal and when I was reading, I was dwarfed 
by these older men who I thought were breathing down my neck. 

I think my mother worried about everyone coming and that the party 
would go well. It was my father who sweated the synagogue part, and 
I sweated the more he did, even though he didn’t have to say much. 
That suit bothered me and my friends teased me about my get-up. 
Older relatives told me they remembered my father’s bar mitzvah that 
was so wonderful and I felt that I had to live up to that. I think that’s 
why I pushed to read faster than I should have. I don’t think my sister 
had as hard a time at her bat mitzvah. There was totally more pressure 
on me.

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I dropped everything as the time got closer so I could concentrate. I 
would have loved to have postponed it but that date was set. I was 
into sports and let that slide for the bar mitzvah. The rabbi told me 
that I would have the support of family to get me through, but I didn’t 
know half these people. I felt that I was singing for strangers, which 
made me nervous. I think it was definitely worth it after everything, 
but I was a wreck before.

The tone of these narratives is borne out by Kosmin’s survey, which showed 
that 51 percent of parents reported that the bar mitzvah dominated the life of the 
family during the year of preparation, but 97 percent still felt that the bar mitzvah 
“was worth the time and trouble involved” (2002, 235-236). Despite complaints 
that the bar mitzvah was time consuming and “nerve-racking,” only one percent of 
the b’nai mitzvah wrote that it “was not worth the time it took” (2002, 235). 

The bar mitzvah treats learning as a masculine attribute because of command 
of the Torah associated with male leadership and the association of the bearded 
rabbi with an especially learned man at a time when the boy is concerned with 
the growth of pubic and facial hair as a sign of masculinity. These images are 
reinforced by cake-toppers (a cake in the form of a Torah is commonly reported), 
a host of figurines often given as gifts that depict the tallit-covered, hairless boy 
at the Torah or bimah under the tutelage of a bearded religious figure.6 Arlow, 
however, did not believe the bar mitzvah was effective in resolving oedipal 
conflicts because of the time lag between sexual maturity and heterosexuality 
sanctioned by modern society. He suggested that as a result of the failure of 
the ceremony to ritualize puberty the bar mitzvah boy chooses a number of 
psychological strategies, including channeling sexual and aggressive energies 
into study, rejecting the father by renewed submission to an exalted father image 
of God, or cessation of religious adherence to either join or rebel against his 
biological father (Arlow 1951, 364-68). Although there is a symbolic replacement of 
the father in the bar mitzvah, the separation from, and competition for, the mother 
characteristic of pubertal rituals is not as apparent. What is manifested more than 
sexual competition is the celebration of the child’s precociousness evident in 
command of the “ordeal by examination.” 

 Instead of independence to another stage, the bar mitzvah presents a 
paradoxical combination of separation and connection. The reading declares 
an early autonomy from education even as it joins the individual to a patrilineal 
tradition. The boy is not integrated into the community as much as he is forced 
to become self-aware of his own development and aspirations. Following the 
symbolic communication of the circumcision (brit milah is literally the “covenant 
of the word”) of which he was unaware, and possibly the upsherin at which 
he begins immersion in the alphabet, the bar mitzvah shows his readiness for 
the world by a performance that draws attention to itself for what Ouaknin and 
Ménager call “creative combinations and recombinations of letters and words” 
challenging the linear structure of storytelling (2005, 63). The boy becomes 
conscious of the attainment of skills that will carry him into adulthood. Rabbis 
hope that the ancient source of the texts will remind him to commit to the 

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synagogue, but the praxis of his “reading in bursts” (words bursting out into letters 
or into groups of letters, making other words and coming together into a new 
order) and exemption of his father allows him to detach (Ouaknin and Ménager 
2005, 62-63). 

Analysis and Explanation: Historical and Social Contexts  
for Jewish Manly Display

If the bar mitzvah is not effective as a sacramental or pubertal rite, its value as an 
ethnic commitment is questionable because of the decline of Jewish involvement 
after the event. If it is not particularly useful for coming of age or revitalizing 
Jewish identity, and parents complain of its exorbitant expense and material 
excess, then what explains its spreading popularity during the twentieth century? 
The Joselit thesis that it became entrenched as a life cycle celebration in which 
the family’s economic success could be displayed and ethnic identity unhinged 
from synagogue life in the post-immigrant generation does not readily apply to 
a different set of social and historical circumstances for Jewish parents with only 
faint memories of the ghetto experience. And if there are traces of this motivation 
of status anxiety still apparent in the suburban conspicuous consumption evident 
in popular-culture portrayals such as Keeping Up with the Steins and Entourage, 
then why did the synagogue component not disappear, particularly since 
prominent American rabbis held a negative or ambivalent attitude toward the 
bar mitzvah? The psychosexual connections of circumcision, examination, and 
wedding are strong in the ceremony, suggesting a developmental explanation, but 
is the ceremony working to resolve oedipal conflicts, considering that the mother 
plays a peripheral role by most accounts and the separation that occurs is from the 
father rather than from the mother as described in other coming-of-age processes? 

With the rush to find a source in antiquity for the age of thirteen as a Jewish 
ritual age, it appears that being forgotten is its modern symbolism as the first year 
of adolescence, or the teen years. The twentieth century, especially the years after 
World War II, was marked by the rise of teenagers as a separate, often troubled 
or rebellious age and marketing target. Many factors went into the creation of 
adolescence particularly within North America and western Europe, including 
the end of child labor and the rise of the high school in attendance as well as 
status within popular culture. Wrapped up in the emerging image of the teen in 
the modern context of compensating for a lack of the provider role is the tough 
guy image of the adolescent relying on strength, competitiveness, and aggressive 
heterosexuality in preparation for economic and social independence. This was 
coupled with the feminized, constricted, suited father of the 1950s vividly spread 
in iconic images such as the rebellious teen’s father wearing an apron in Rebel 
Without a Cause (1955) and the domestication of the father-businessman in The 
Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956) (see Cross 2008, 95; see also Cohan 1997; 
Gilbert 2005; Gordon 1959, 57-64; Osgerby 2001; Young and Young 2004, 30, 
184-86). Against this background of changing views of age-based masculinity, the 
Jewish emphasis on learning as the basis of masculine identity caused conflicts 
with the dominant society, at least if the goal was to integrate into society. The 

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Jewish body, as Sander Gilman has pointed out in his study of the European 
sources for this conflict, was defined as unsuited for military or strenuous work 
(Gilman 1991; see also Konner 2009, 144-53). Jews were known for brains rather 
than brawn (Gilman 1996). During the 1950s, Jews were notably absent from 
many cultural displays of teen masculine power including music, motors, sports, 
and dance (Kimmel 1996, 277-78). In folk humor, Jews were smart but weak, and 
many jokes about the bar mitzvah boy underscored his inadequacy as a sexualized 
man (Ouaknin and Ménager 2005, 55).

If that pressure to show manly traits came from outside of the Jewish 
community at a time when the bonds of the community began to unravel, from 
within the community, egalitarian ideas about the bat mitzvah began to take 
hold in Conservative and Reform wings of Judaism. The time of maturation 
for girls was defined a year earlier than the boys, adding insult to injury, even 
though her ceremony was not thematized with any declaration of “Today, I am a 
woman.” In the background of the Jewish boy’s maturation is the growth of the 
image through popular sources of the overprotective mother who inhibits the 
Jewish boy’s maturity and stays with him through adulthood (Antler 2007). One 
should also not underestimate the psychological impact of Jewish circumcision as 
another internal conflict among Jews because of the implication that it diminishes 
sexual aggressiveness and masculine identity (Glick 2005; Mark 2003; Silverman, 
Eric 2006). Looking historically at bar mitzvah announcements, the theme of 
the bar mitzvah began to change from a subdued family ceremony of joining 
congregational life to the public celebration of manhood during the 1950s. It 
first becomes a theme of television sitcoms in the 1960s, usually representing a 
Jewish boy’s anxiety about either going through the “ordeal by examination” or 
having missed an opportunity to have one (Pearl and Pearl 1999). Many of the 
parties had as themes the interests of the boy, such as music, sports, and motors 
rather than religious subjects, and these interests along with displays of economic 
power were significant for culturally connecting to a normative, if not precocious 
hypermasculinity. For example, I asked boys who had gone through the bar 
mitzvah how they arrived at the themes for their post-ceremony parties. As the 
following narratives attest, it was a decision that they felt strongly they wanted  
to control. 

If I left it to my parents, I’m sure they would have rented a boring 
hall and made it look like their wedding. I wanted a teen party and I 
wanted it to be cool. I was into cars and skateboards, so I got them to 
put it in an auto museum, which none of my buddies had done, and 
the centerpieces were dudes on skateboards. I told them that I would 
do all the traditional stuff for the synagogue if I could have the party 
that wouldn’t embarrass me. 

My parents did ask me for ideas about the party, and I’m glad they 
did. I was worried that they would want too much of a family 
affair. The ceremony followed the law, and I wanted the party to be 
something that would be mine. I wanted to let go and impress my 

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27

friends. It had to be about sports to save face after all the stuff I took 
about going through bar mitzvah lessons. There weren’t too many 
Jewish signs, although my parents did want the candle lighting for the 
relatives. But I had a rock band, so the kids could get into it.

More than a celebration of the completion of the bar mitzvah, the party allowed 
the boys to show their connection to normative culture, especially to masculine 
pursuits of sports, recreation, and music. This was especially important because 
the boys recognized that for the most part, their mothers made the arrangements 
for the party. With demonstrations of masculinity and maturity being important 
at the party, the ceremony is remembered in relation to the father’s role. The 
components of the synagogue ceremony emphasizing the boy taking the father’s 
role and the rise in status of the recitation as an “ordeal” were adapted into the 
declaration, “Today, I am a man.” Considering the praxis of the bar mitzvah, one 
might easily construe this declaration as “Today, I am the father”–and I am better 
than he was. Competition for ownership of the event is evident in the idea that 
the successful bar mitzvah reflects on the status of the father, as shown especially 
in Keeping Up with the Steins, in which the materialism of the party conveys the 
father’s male provider role coming into conflict with the boy’s identity formation. 

Figure 5. Skateboarder centerpiece at bar mitzvah held in auto museum, Hershey, 
Pennsylvania, 2006. Photograph by Simon J. Bronner.

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The early age at which the bar mitzvah occurred added to the ceremony’s appeal 
for announcing the Jewish boy’s claim to manliness if not legal maturity. 

Into the twenty-first century under the influence of the women’s movement, 
questions of the proper masculine role taken by Jewish boys increased. Reports in 
books such as Jew-Jitsu: The Hebrew Hands of Fury by Rabbi Daniel Eliezer and 
Paul Kupperberg (2008) along with satirical movies such as The Hebrew Hammer 
(2004) expressed a confusion about whether the answer to these questions would 
be to embrace knowledge as a source of social power or a sign of diminished 
masculinity. I contend that the bar mitzvah gained importance therefore in what 
increasingly became seen as the most important phase of modern life and for a 
group that felt the most conflict in its definition of masculinity. Despite Theodor 
Gaster’s avowal that the bar mitzvah imparts nothing, I find that its symbolism 
of circumcision, examination, and wedding is joined to modern meanings of 
masculine maturity. It is imperfect as a ritual of religious commitment, to be sure, 
but it has persisted and even spread in the modern context, not because of its 
signal of religious majority or adult obligations, but its negotiation of adolescence 
for an ethnic group uncertain in American popular culture of its masculine identity 
and patriarchal continuity.

Implication: Feminization and the Ritual Burden of the Bar Mitzvah

Having made this argument for linking the rise of the bar mitzvah to a crisis of 
masculinity for assimilating Jews within North America, I see signs today that it is 
likely to enter a new phase as an invented tradition. Some of the connections to 
masculinity, for instance, are undermined as the synagogue goes through what 
has been heralded as feminization, including female rabbis and cantors leading 
the bar mitzvah (Goldstein 1991; Marder 1996; Seidman 1997). Mothers are taking 
more of a role, and for my memoir writers concerned for their masculine image, 
that caused more, rather than less, distress. One compensation that several writers 
mentioned was taking more control of the party, infusing it with masculine themes 
and holding it at auto museums, ski slopes, or sports stadiums. Or the party 
exuded a sense of coolness in representation of a modern fashion and electronics 
rather than the process of tradition evoking continuity with Jewish identity. One 
bar mitzvah adviser touched a nerve by showing parents how to highlight their 
son’s hip individuality in step with high style rather than collective tradition 
associated with sameness by offering Mitzvah Chic, subtitled, “How to Host a 
Meaningful, Fun, Drop-Dead Gorgeous Bar or Bat Mitzvah” (Greenberg 2006). 

Some families view holding a bar mitzvah in Israel as a sign of religious 
devotion, but rather than departing from tradition, it fits into the trope of 
announcing masculine attributes at a young age because of the image of 
Israelis as tough Jews. A common post-ceremony activity, for example, is to go 
to Masada, the historic site where a small number of rebellious Jews held off 
legions of the Roman Empire. Many of the boys show their vigor by climbing up 
a steep path to the plateau 1,300 feet high. In addition to this bar mitzvah trip, 
others show a variety of creative ways to engage the boy with a strenuous and 
memorable experience. As the boys seek to declare their own identity, the fathers 

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are frequently involved as the son’s pal engaged equally in sports and music, 
rather than speaking as the authoritarian voice of the elders or sages (see Cross 
2008). If the above argument holds up, then as the popular perception of Jewish 
masculinity changes to the point where it joins normative muscular manliness, 
then the bar mitzvah will carry less of a ritual burden to show the development of 
the boy’s mettle as well as his mind (see Brod 1988, 2004; Bronner 2005, 34-36). 
The bar mitzvah is the tradition everyone thinks they know from popular culture 
as a sign of excess of mass culture generally, although assigned to Jews, but its 
folk cultural practice reveals an uneasy father-son relationship in a society that 
creates conflicts for the boy between brains and brawn as he declares at the age  
of thirteen, “Today, I am a man.” 

NOTES

1. For the logical problem of social functionalism analyzing consequences 
rather than causes, see Oring 1976; Bronner 1986, 74-88; Bronner 2006. 

2. Evidence for the Yom Kippur fast before the bar mitzvah as a folk custom is 
found in discussion groups such as Imamother: Connecting Jewish Mothers (www.
imamother.com). The question of whether to allow children to fast frequently 
comes up. Among Orthodox members, there is reference made to “the three fasts” 
(out of seven Jewish fast days) which are ritually done by the bar-mitzvah-to-be: 
Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement, usually occurring in September or October), 
Tisha B’Av (usually held in July or August remembering the tragedies of the Jewish 
people), and Ta’anit Bechorim (the Fast of the Firstborn commemorating the 
saving of the firstborn in Egypt from plague, observed the day before Passover in 
March or April). On September 10, 2008, for instance, “1st” from Israel posted this 
query, “I am looking for the reason/source behind the custom of the fasting the 
3 fasts before bar or bat mitzvah. Do only people from certain backgrounds do 
this, where does this custom come from? Is there a basis for it? I always learned 
that children under bar/bat mitzvah age should not fast the whole day. Once they 
are at the age of chinuch, they can be encouraged to fast for a few hours in the 
morning (and at night 9 av and yom kippur). And then that when they do eat, 
it should only be what is necessary, not indulging on junk food and continuous 
snack.” I recorded seven replies, none of which proposed any textual sources, and 
rabbis who were cited in the thread were mixed on whether to follow the custom. 
Shalhevet from Israel wrote on the same day, “Our rov says not to do it,” whereas 
ChossidMom replied on October 2, 2008, that “My son who will be Bar Mitzvah 
a couple of weeks after Succos should fast this Yom Kippur, according to the 
rav,” even though he “says it’s a bunch of baloney...He said there is absolutely no 
source for this.” The other replies referred to doing it although they did not know 
the rationale: “we did–but I have no idea why” (greenfire, September 10, 2008); 
“My father holds by it. He told me the reason but of course I forgot” (flowerpower, 
September 10, 2008); “I never heard of 3 fasts before, but one I did. My parents 
always said to fast one fast before also only if you can” (cuteson, September 10, 
2008); “I did, as a kid! I grew up in a modern orthodox community, and my whole 
circle of firends were really machmir on that one. (Then again, we made fasting 

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FATHERS AND SONS  BRONNER

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into a competition–‘how long did YOU fast?’ ‘What did you break YOUR fast on,’ 
etc…) (shininglight, October 2, 2008).  

3. The rhetorical use of patoor in regard to release from manly obligation is still 
apparent in modern Hebrew where it refers to an exemption from military duty.

4. Ruth Eis (1979) states that although the sashes are referred to as “Torah 
binders” in English, “the correct name is wimpel (f.), an old German word for 
cloth or veil, related to the Middle High German bewimpfen, to cover, to conceal. 
Typically, they are made from the cloth which covers the new-born male during 
the circumcision ceremony (11). 

5. Ellen Frankel and Betsy Platkin Teutsch in The Encyclopedia of Jewish 
Symbols (1992) trace the frequent presence of lions, leopards, eagles, and deer in 
ceremonial Jewish objects to the Mishnah (Pirke Avot 5:23) which commands, “Be 
as strong as a leopard, as light as an eagle, as swift as a deer, as brave as a lion to 
do the will of your Father in heaven” (40). 

6. See, for example, the cake toppers at the website Magic Mud (www.
magicmud.com/Judaic a shots.htm) accessed December 28, 2008. It offers 
personalized bar mitzvah cake toppers and figurines at the bimah. Another site 
shows a figurine with the bearded rabbi overlooking the bar mitzvah boy, entitled 
“Bar Mitzvah–Father and Son Figurine” promoted by Liorel Art from Israel: stores.
ebay.com/Art_From_Israel_Figureines-Sculptures_WOQQFsubZ2100394.

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