A Day to Remember!

This week we celebrated the bat mitzvah of our daughter Batya Raizel. It seems only yesterday she was born, and already she is considered a full-fledged adult! I couldn’t have predicted how emotional I would feel as we celebrated this milestone event.

Months ago, when we first started thinking about her celebration, I googled, “how to celebrate a bat mitzvah in NYC.” After all,  this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I want to make sure we do it in the best and most memorable way.

There was no dearth of options. New York is home to one of the world’s largest Jewish communities, and my daughter certainly isn’t the first to celebrate her bat mitzvah. Each venue promised a Bat Mitzvah that will never be forgotten.

So I started making phone calls. 

Between the event hall, dance floor, DJ, decor, flowers, and catering, not to mention putting up family and friends in hotels for the weekend, even a cursory calculation had already come out to double my yearly salary. 

Time for a new plan. 

We could create an unforgettable experience on our own—I was sure of it. In fact, the very nature and meaning of the day makes it innately memorable.

Bat mitzvah is not a verb. It’s commonly used that way—“she was bat mitzvahed”—but it actually means “daughter of mitzvot.” Before she turns 12, I am responsible for her halachic obligations and the responsibility for any sins she commits sits on my shoulders. But when she turns 12, she becomes a bat mitzvah—a daughter of mitzvot, fully responsible for her own spiritual welfare, an adult as far as Judaism is concerned. 

My daughter took this transition seriously, studying the meaning of bat mitzvah and her new role in depth during the months leading up to her big day. 

To mark the occasion, we held a candle-lighting ceremony. We set up 12 elegant candles, each one representing a woman in Jewish history that my daughter felt connected to, including biblical ancestors and her own grandmothers. She called upon friends and family members to light each candle, and of course she lit one too. Each candle represented a link in the chain that connects us to those who come before us and those who will come after us. 

This is the meaning of bat mitzvah that I wanted my daughter to come away with. She is part of Jewish history—a Jewish women. When she needs inspiration, she can look to each of these strong Jewish women who came before her. If she feels adrift, she can find her footing by remembering that she is not an isolated individual—she is part of a greater whole. Her brave grandmothers, great grandmothers, and matriarchs continued the chain of Jewish tradition as only Jewish women can. Now she, too, is part of that chain. For this reason, too, her celebration was a women-only affair. 

She wrote her own speech with little guidance from us because we wanted it to be her own, something she will cherish and remember. 

From this day forward she is committed to every mitzvah as an adult, just like us. 

I hope and pray that she will never forget this day, that she will always view it as a positive transition, and that she will continue to feel deeply connected with her matriarchs and fellow Jewish women. 

As she sets off on her spiritual journey of life, we wait with great anticipation to see the powerful Jewish woman she herself will become. Mazal tov, Rosie!