The Star Ledger Copyright © The Star Ledger 2004 May
29, 2004 Celebrating a spirited occasion
THE BENEVOLENT BAR MITZVAH By PEGGY
O'CROWLEY STAR-LEDGER STAFF
Joey Shapiro's bar mitzvah celebration
featured music, but not the standard DJ spinning top hits. Everyone
got down to the music of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, at a public
concert whose ticket sales went to the family's synagogue, Temple
Ner Tamid of Bloomfield. "As the daughter of two Holocaust
survivors, it's very important for this event to be Jewish. This
is about being connected to the culture," said Joey's mother,
Cheryl Gotthelf of Montclair. She and her husband sponsored the
concert on behalf of the synagogue, and held a private reception
at the temple for Joey prior to the performance. While the family's
way of marking Joey's transition to adulthood in the Jewish community
might be unusual, it's at the forefront of a trend among bar and
bat mitzvah students and their families trying to make the event
more meaningful. It's a trend that has grown in the last decade
or so. Now most congregations recommend, or require, that candidates
do a "mitzvah project," like raising money for a charity,
or volunteering at a nursing home, in addition to leading a Shabbat
service, and being called to Torah for the first time as a bar
or bat mitzvah.
There are Web sites with suggestions
on projects that make a difference, and some students, like Joey
and Janna Zuckerman of Edison, go above and beyond. Janna's bat
mitzvah project three years ago was a walk to raise money for
breast cancer research, which she has continued to run each year
since. Others eschew the traditional cash gifts, donating them
to charity instead, or create table decorations of stuffed animals
or books that are donated to charity, or send their party leftovers
to soup kitchens. "I'm happy to say that bar/bat mitzvah
altruism is becoming a delightful fad," said Rabbi Jeffrey
K. Salkin, the senior rabbi of The Temple in Atlanta and the author
of "Putting God on the Guest List: How to Reclaim the Spiritual
Meaning of Your Child's Bar or
Bat Mitzvah," first published in 1992. "Increasingly,
young people are doing mitzvah projects that connect them to spirituality
and generosity. And I'm also happy to say kids and their parents
are expending a great deal of creativity." For Jews, becoming
a bar or bat mitzvah is a major life cycle event and a joyous
occasion marking the young person's entry into the adult community.
Mitzvah means commandment, or an obligation to God and fellow
human beings.
The ceremony takes
place during Sabbath services shortly after the child's 13th birthday,
in which the celebrant is called to read from Torah, the Jewish
scriptures, as an adult member of the community for the first time.
For many families,
a party is held afterwards, which can range from receptions
at the synagogue to huge bashes in catering halls featuring DJs
and "motivators"
who pump up the guests. Some parents send young guests on excursions.
In the last five
to seven years, there has been an effort to put the "mitzvah"
back in the experience, according to Naomi Eisenberger, managing
director of the Ziv
Tzedakah Fund, a small nonprofit that funds grass-roots
projects. Helping
families find the project that's right for them "is a big part
of what we do," she said.
On its Web site (www.ziv.org),
the Millburn-based fund provides ideas for
candidates.
The online process,
devised by fund founder and writer Rabbi Danny Siegel,
asks questions of
the candidate: "What am I good at? What do I like to do?
What bothers me so
much about what is wrong in the world that I weep or
scream in anger and
frustration, or am speechless at the horror of it?"
Those questions are
included in Siegel's latest book, "The Bar/Bat Mitzvah
Book: A Practical
Guide for Changing the World Through Your Simcha" (Town
House Press, $12),
to be published in August. "Simcha" means "special
celebration"
in Hebrew.
For Janna Zuckerman,
whose family belongs to Neve Shalom in Metuchen, coming
up with an idea was
relatively easy. A family friend had died recently of
breast cancer, and
Janna's bat mitzvah was to be in October, Breast Cancer
Awareness Month.
So Janna decided to hold a fund-raising walk for breast
cancer and contacted
various groups.
Then came the hard
part.
"Most of them
said, 'Oh, you're only 12, what can you do?'" she said. She
finally teamed up
with City of Hope, a Los Angeles-based biomedical research
institute, which
took on her project. That first year, 250 participants
raised $16,000.
"We had no idea
if 50 people would show up. It was amazing," said her
mother, Karen Zuckerman.
"This is the kind of experience you could never
learn from a book."
Every year since,
the walk has grown and doubled the amount of money it
raised. This year's
walk, held earlier this month, included 1,100 people and
raised about $75,000,
Karen Zuckerman said.
"I like helping
people and I plan to continue as long as I can," said Janna,
now a 14-year-old freshman at J.P. Stevens High School in Edison.
Joey Shapiro's mitzvah
project was making and selling decoupage vases to raise $300 to
help four youths in the former Soviet Union and Israel become
bar and bat mitzvah.
But for his celebration, he and his mother were looking for something
more, he said.
"I've been to
a billion DJ parties," said the seventh grader at Glenfield
Middle School in Montclair. "I'm not a trend follower."
Joey said his mother
- who emphasized they were not criticizing others'
choices for how to
celebrate the occasion - came up with lots of ideas before they
settled on a concert of klezmer music, the upbeat folk music with
roots in eastern European Jewry.
The concert, with
300 people dancing in the aisles, was a lot of fun, Joey said. "I
was surprised my friends liked it, but they all did," he said.
At one point, Joey went on stage with the band, and to his surprise
he was hoisted in a chair to the sounds of the traditional hora.
"The spirit
in the room was pure joy. Even the band was moved," Gotthelf
said. And lest anyone
feel badly that Joey did not get a youth-oriented
celebration, his
mother said, he and his friends went whitewater rafting the
next day.
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