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The Bar and Bat Mitzvah in the Yishuv and Early Israel: From Initiation Rite to Birthday Party

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2018

Hizky Shoham
Hizky Shoham*
Affiliation:
Bar-Ilan UniversityThe Shalom Hartman Institute
*
hizky.shoham@gmail.com
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Abstract

This article is an anthropological history of the bar/bat mitzvah ceremony in the Yishuv and Israel of the 1940s and the 1950s, when this ceremony radically grew in terms of the space, time, and economic resources devoted to it, as well as expanded to include girls. To explain that shift, I suggest distinguishing classic rites of initiation from the system of life-cycle ceremonies typical of modern consumer culture, which emphasizes the transition between temporal markers rather than social statuses and imposes no task on the birthday celebrant. The article reconstructs the process by which, during the 1940s and the 1950s, the bar/bat mitzvah ceremony came to function more as an elaborate birthday party than as a rite of initiation. The historical reconstruction demonstrates how, during the late Mandate period and early years of statehood, a new grassroots Israeli culture emerged, shaped by the accommodation of Western consumer culture to Jewish traditions rather than by Zionist ideology or established religion.

Type
Research Article
Information
AJS Review , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , April 2018 , pp. 133 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 2018 

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Footnotes

I wish to acknowledge Derek Penslar, Shira Klein, and Sara Hirschhorn for their useful comments on an earlier version of this article that was presented at the Israel Studies seminar in the University of Oxford, and Nissim Leon and Noam Zion for their advice. Special thanks are due to Lenn Schramm, who never stops criticizing.

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111. Haim Shorer, “‘Inyanim: Lo’ ‘al Eichmann,” Davar, May 27, 1960, 2.

112. E.g., “Ḥagigat bar miẓvah bi-meʿon yetomim 'asher be-Givʿat Sha'ul,” Do'ar ha-yom, June 20, 1924, 6; “Be-tenuʿah,” Ha-ẓofeh, December 24, 1944, 3.

113. Cf. “Yeme huledet lama?,” Davar, February 11, 1947, 2.

114. Sinai, Ha-shomrot she-lo’ shamru, 234.

115. “Be-yom ḥamsin,” Davar, November 13, 1946, 4.

116. Moshe Smilansky, “Mi-shut ba-’areẓ,” Ha-ẓofeh, July 27, 1941, 2.

117. S. Savorai, “‘Al ḥagigat bar miẓvah,” (Ein Ḥarod, 1946/1948), at http://www.chagim.org.il/ListP.s.aspx?catid=660, accessed January 11, 2015.

118. Smoli, “Bar miẓvah.”

119. Hasia, “Bene miẓvah,” Devar ha-poʿelet 10, no. 22, January 23, 1936, 225–26.

120. Meir Melamed, “Ḥagigat bar miẓvah” (Kinneret, 1942), at http://www.chagim.org.il/ListP.s.aspx?catid=660, accessed January 11, 2015.

121. Yitzhak Ben-Yosef, “Bar miẓvah,” n.d. [1946], file 3962, document 6, Shitim Archive, pp. 98–101; “Meḥaye ha-noʿar ha-ʿoved: Bar miẓvah,” Davar, January 6, 1950, 7.

122. E.g., “'Aḥad ‘asar mi-yalde Ḥulda higi'u le-bar miẓvah,” Davar Liladim, January 8, 1948, 13.

123. E.g., Shlomo Wilkomirsky, “Ḥagigat bar miẓvah—keẓad?,” Davar, December 11, 1959, 6.

124. Bar-On, Yaara, “'Aḥvat 'aḥim: Ḥaye yom yom ve-tikse ḥanikhah ba-kibbutz,” 'Alpayim 33 (2009): 189–204Google Scholar.

125. “Yom shishi: Reshet 'alef,” Davar, July 15, 1966, 44.

126. Erma Pollack, “Bar miẓvah ba-kibbutz,” Davar, February 11, 1960, 3. See also Wilkomirsky, “Ḥagigat bar miẓvah—keẓad?.” On Passover see Tzur, Muki, “Pesach in the Land of Israel: Kibbutz Haggadot,” Israel Studies 12, no. 2 (2007): 74–103Google Scholar.

127. Rachel Bar, “Bar miẓvah—keẓad?,” file 3962, document 6, Shitim Archive,  p. 86.

128. “Beʿayot ba-kibbutz,” Ḥerut, May 28, 1959, 2.

129. Ibid.; see numerous documents in the Shitim Archive, e.g.: file 3962, doc. 6, pp. 19, 75, 74, 69, 96, 108; Ben-Gurion, Arie et al. , eds., Yalkut bar miẓvah (Beit-Hashita: self-published, 1967), 188–201Google Scholar.

130. Ibid., 193.

131. Bar-On, “'Aḥvat 'aḥim.”

132. See, for example, Cohen-Vardi, Alma, ed., Bat miẓvah u-bar miẓvah (Tel Aviv: Alma College and Yediot Aḥronot, 2004)Google Scholar. Cf. Hilton, Bar Mitzvah, 180–86.

133. E.g. Aron, Isa, “Revolutionizing Bar/Bat Mitzvah,” CCAR Journal 62, no. 4 (2015): 13–39Google Scholar.

134. Shoham, Hizky, “‘He Had a Ceremony—I Had a Party’: Boys’ Initiation Rites and Girls’ Birthday Parties in Israeli Culture,” Modern Judaism 36, no. 3 (2016): 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

135. Hilton, Bar Mitzvah, 170; Diner, Hasia R., The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 290Google Scholar.

136. Helman's trailblazing studies limit themselves to the interwar era and do not consider the issue of periodization (see especially Young Tel Aviv). My own work on consumption also concentrates on the interwar years, suggesting that a new socioeconomic and political order emerged in the 1940s, but again, without a detailed historical account. Shoham, Hizky, “‘Buy Local’ or ‘Buy Jewish’? Separatist Consumption in Interwar Palestine,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 45, no. 3 (2013): 469–89Google Scholar. See also Gross and Metzer, “Palestine in World War II”; Seikaly, Sherene, “Arab Businessmen Challenge the 1940s Status Quo,” Mediterraneans 14 (2010): 85–92Google Scholar; Seikaly, , Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015)Google Scholar.

137. Rosman, Moshe, How Jewish Is Jewish History? (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007), 56–81Google Scholar.