Bar Mitzvah

Bar Mitzvah
Name
Institution
Date
In the Orthodox Judaism and Jewish community, bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah are commonly used to denote Jewish coming of age. Bar a word in Aramaic (which used to be vernacular of Jewish people literary means son while Bat means daughter. Mitzvah pervades the two words bar and bat meaning commandment or law (Goble, 1981). Technically, the phrase means ‘son of commandment’ and ‘daughter of commandment’ respectively. According to Jewish law, these terms are given to boys and girls alike to refer to their change of legal status given to them at a specific age to denote graduation from childhood to adulthood. This status is however is not achieved through having a special occasion or ceremony in the synagogue or elsewhere (Goble, 1981).
From a traditional perspective of the Jewish Law, children do not have an obligation to observe the commandments even though they are highly encouraged to do so in preparation for their adulthood responsibilities. It is until at the age of 12 years and one day and 13 years and one day for girls and boys respectfully those children become obliged to observe the commandments (Murray & Jenner, 2002). The bar mitzvah ceremony therefore marks an official transition and assumed obligations for the child. However, it should be noted that there is no necessity for the ceremony to consider one a bar mitzvah or a bat mitzvah. Prior to reaching the bar mitzvah status, parents are held responsible for their child’s actions. Reaching the age automatically lifts the responsibility from the parents. Henceforth, a child bears their responsibilities regarding the laws of Jewish rituals, tradition and ethics. In addition, they are able to participate in every aspect of the Jewish community social aspects. Orthodox Judaism requires the father of the bar mitzvah to thank God for lifting the responsibility of another soul from him (Murray & Jenner, 2002).
Today, bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah have become central concept to Jewish life cycle and highly revered that it is ubiquitous to find many books including the Webster dictionary. Contentions have been raised though with the dictionary meaning that fuses the concept with the age factor. Traditionally, this connection is incorrect as initially, the maturity of children between the ages of 10 and 13 years were strictly theoretical. This was changed later between the 14th and 16th century in Germany and Poland. Children were prohibited to read from Torah – the first five books of the Bible. The bar mitzvah had and has a central role in the Jewish culture. Below, we look at the role of the scripture in the service as well as a description of the ceremony and the participants (Greenspoon, Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick, 2010).
Role of the scriptures
First of all, a child who have not reached bar mitzvah is bound to restrictions regarding how much they can read from the Bible. For this reason, the Bible plays very important role in the whole ritual. Whereas the Bible gives the minimum age for religious accountability at 20, the Talmud pushes the limit downwards to the age of thirteen. The origin of the bar mitzvah celebration according to this is therefore not biblical. Albeit of this,...