Elana Sztokman

[This article appears in the latest issue of the Jerusalem Report, in the Up Front column]
I promised myself I would not choose the color of the napkins. At my son’s bar mitzvah, I said to myself, I would not let myself be relegated to the role of event planner, the one who designs invitations and calls the caterer. I wanted something more – I wanted to be part of the content, to participate in a meaningful way, and to be part of my son’s inner life as he goes through this momentous occasion. In practice, escaping socialized roles was harder than I imagined, particularly at such a gender-laden moment.

“Now you’re a man,” was the recurring refrain from friends and relatives around the world. Being told you’re a man at a stage in your life when your favorite pastimes are computers, basketball, and ignoring the dirty socks on the floor may explain why some men later in life continue to believe that these are indeed the icons of masculinity. I kept wondering how my son internalized this “be a man” message as he ran off with his friends to the park.

“I would like to thank my wife” is another refrain that has accompanied this year of bar mitzvah parties. Sometimes it comes from the boy, sometimes the father. “This whole thing would have never happened without the woman of the house.” The “this” of course could mean anything from giving birth to ensuring that his slacks fit when he reads the torah. Like the bow of the conductor at the end of an opera, this is meant to be a gratuitous gesture, reminding us all of those behind-the-scenes types who toil while everyone else plays. Of course nobody ever remembers the conductor’s name and would not recognize him if they passed him on the street. But it makes us all feel better to have that extra bow, and we can ignore the fact that his spot is a darkened cavern beneath the stage in which he sweats for hours. That is how the “thank the mother” speeches make me feel – like under-appreciated orchestra conductors who happen to share a house with stage stars. I suppose it’s better than the alternative of not being thanked at all. I’m not sure, though.

From the outset, I told my family that we were doing things a little differently. For one thing, my 15-year old daughter taught my son how to read Torah. This was a lovely idea with a stressful execution, but to both of their credits, my kids did it. She taught him his entire portion and haftara, and he did a fantastic job on the day – and now, he is eternally stuck with the knowledge that the essence of the “becoming a man” ceremony was learning from a woman (admittedly a young one). I hope that will help him question the “be a man” narrative as he goes through life.

In addition, my spouse and I both studied the text with him, and helped him write his speech. He is thus faced with the reality that women have equal access to the ritual and to the knowledge of Judaism.

If we belonged to the Reform community, this would all be a no-brainer. In fact, we would ironically be worried about the opposite – about the threat of boys becoming alienated from such a ‘feminine’ set of roles. But for now, my son goes to an all-boys’ Orthodox yeshiva, where the presence of women is felt primarily in the secretary’s office and some secular studies’ classes. Indeed, whenever a woman enters the premises, as I have on occasion, all heads turn. The boys on the basketball court stop dribbling for a moment while they figure out who the poor sod is whose mother has obviously come to embarrass him. The yeshiva is a self-contained world where boys are learning independence and self-sufficiency – everything from eating, praying, learning and playing is done with boys only. Women are external, foreigners, aberrations, or perhaps appendages. The boys may notice us when they get hungry or develop other desires later in life. But for now, we are living in a world in which the message of women’s equal entry into Jewish life is hardly taken for granted.

So as my son enters this life, I’m increasingly aware of feeling left behind. In becoming bar mitzvah, he is gaining a higher social status than mine. He walks into an Orthodox synagogue and counts, he is invited to lead in places where I am still excluded, and he is now a formal member of public society in ways in which I, as an Orthodox woman, am not. That is really difficult for me. As much as people talk about the gender revolution in Orthodoxy, it seems to me that there may be some changes among women, but in the boys’/mens’ world, there is quite a bit of business as usual. How can we expect broad social change if the boys are still entering a standard man’s role? There will be no gender revolution in Orthodoxy, I submit, until there are places where Orthodox boys are educated as feminists.

I have been searching for ways to fight this. I participated in our partnership minyan in Modi’in, leading parts of the service, and created innovative ways to bless him, like leading an impromptu choir singing a song that I wrote him. It was risky, but my son enjoyed it, which is what I wanted. His older-sister-slash-torah-teacher also had a role in the service. His father, by the way, also had ritual roles – but he also took care of buying the pants. And when the caterer asked me about napkins, I said, perhaps over-emphatically, “Not interested.”

Privately, I said to my son, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t want you to be a man. I just want you to be a person – a nice, caring, spiritual person.” If he thinks about that in later years, when he has more of those ‘be a man’ exchanges, I think I will have had my role in his bar mitzvah.