Today I Am a Woman

Description

Celebrating bat mitzvah in diverse Jewish cultures

Visit the Today I Am a Woman website Learn more about the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, where author Shulamit Reinharz serves as director

Recollections of the first bat mitzvah at the only synagogue in Indonesia, a poignant bat mitzvah memory of World War II Italy, and an American bat mitzvah shared with girls in a Ukrainian orphanage—these are a few of the resonant testimonies about the transition from Jewish girl to Jewish woman collected in Today I Am a Woman. Introduced by brief biographical notes and descriptions of Jewish communities around the world, these stories reveal how Judaism defines this important rite of passage in a girl's life in widely disparate settings. The contributions are from bat mitzvah girls of the past and present, their parents, communities, and religious leaders. Including evocative family photos—some recent, some from decades past—this rich compilation is an ideal gift for bat mitzvah celebrants, their families, and friends.

But 1938, a year that began with such promise and happiness, turned into a year of despair. I cannot think of my bat mitzvah [in Turin] without recalling every event of that fateful year. It was probably the most important year of my life for the development of my character, my personality, and my dreams. That is why I am telling this story.

Acknowledgements
Preface – Shulamit Reinharz
Introduction – Barbara Vinick
1: Africa
2: Asia
3: Australia and New Zealand
4: Caribbean
5: Europe
6: Former Soviet Union, Former Yugoslavia, and Eastern Europe
7: Latin America
8: Middle East and North Africa
9: North America
Glossary
For Further Reading

Sujets

• Rituals
• Jewish Studies
• Philosophie et théologie
• Religión
• Judaism
• Religion
• Practice

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 07 novembre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253005175
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Today I Am a Woman

Today I Am a Woman
STORIES OF BAT MITZVAH AROUND THE WORLD

EDITED BY
Barbara Vinick Shulamit Reinharz
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931 Orders by e-mail [e-mail]
2012 by Barbara Vinick, Shulamit Reinharz, and the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data
Today I am a woman : stories of bat mitzvah around the world / edited by Barbara Vinick and Shulamit Reinharz.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-253-35693-2 (cl : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-253-00517-5 (eb)
1.Bat mitzvah. 2. Bat mitzvah-History. 3.Judaism-History. 4. Jews-History. 5. Jews- Social life and customs. I. Vinick, Barbara H. II. Reinharz, Shulamit.
BM707.T63 2011
296.4 43409-dc23 2011020214
1 2 3 4 5 16 15 14 13 12 11
For

Emily and Julia Vinick, Rachel and Abigail Garrity, Yael and Naomi Reinharz
CONTENTS
Preface \ Shulamit Reinharz
Acknowledgments
Introduction \ Barbara Vinick
Africa
Asia
Australia and New Zealand
Caribbean
Europe
Former Soviet Union, Former Yugoslavia, and Eastern Europe
Latin America
Middle East and North Africa
North America
Glossary
Further Reading
PREFACE
Shulamit Reinharz
In 1997, an interesting and unusual partnership was formed between Brandeis University and Hadassah, the Women s Zionist Organization of America. That partnership began with a national study of what American Jewish women were thinking, leading to publication of Voices for Change: Future Directions for American Jewish Women. 1 Following up on the work we had done together, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute (HBI) was established on the Brandeis campus to continue studies on Jewish women.
From the start, the focus of the HBI has been different from the original research, however. Rather than looking only at the attitudes and experiences of Jewish women in the United States, the HBI examines those of Jews worldwide, including women, girls, men, and boys. After all, Jews are an international community, or as anthropologists say, a diasporic society, with a core and many branches. We might even call Jews a double-diasporic society, in that there currently are two centers of Jewish life: the United States, where approximately 40 percent of world Jewry lives, and Israel, where another 40 percent lives. While recognizing the numerical strength of these two core communities, it is also important to note that the remaining 20 percent of Jews lives neither in the United States nor in Israel. This 20 percent is scattered around the world in groups that may be large (e.g., the former Soviet Union), medium-sized (e.g., England, France), small (e.g., Cuba, Greece), or tiny (e.g., Peru). Many Jewish communities are difficult to identify by geographic boundary, since they are in transition from one place to another (e.g., Ethiopians and Russians in Israel).
In some communities, such as those of North Africa, Jewish life has disappeared altogether. For those communities, what we have is the living memories of community members who have moved elsewhere. Some of these people try to recreate the customs of their former homes when they resettle. In other areas, like the United States and Israel, Jewish life is growing.
A Jewish person is expected to feel connected to and responsible for all other Jews throughout the world. How can we do this if we don t know how Jews live their lives elsewhere? And while we should feel responsible for one another, this does not mean that Jews in one country should tell Jews in another area how to live their lives Jewishly. It may be the case that the existence of a diaspora with multiple Jewish groups and the adaptive variety in Jewish life have contributed to the unusual record of survival of the Jewish people. Certainly, we cannot attribute survival to Jews being treated well throughout the centuries.
Nevertheless, if there is one thing we would like to see happen in Jewish communities around the world, it is increased Jewish learning for girls and, consequently, more opportunities for bat mitzvah, the rite by which a girl becomes a Jewish adult. Without bat mitzvah, a girl never has the opportunity to declare her Jewishness in front of her community. The marriage ceremony does not fulfill that purpose, and, of course, we cannot assume that all Jewish girls will eventually marry. A Jewish boy typically has both a brit milah (circumcision) and a bar mitzvah. A Jewish girl should at least have a bat mitzvah!
This book opens the door to many Jewish communities-core, large, medium, small, and tiny-by focusing on one point of entry, the bat mitzvah ceremony. In a previous book, Esther s Legacy: Celebrating Purim around the World , we chose a different focus. 2 Queen Esther of Persia obviously is a heroine in Jewish legend, and her story has become the basis of a holiday. But how important is Purim in actuality? Is the holiday practiced worldwide? With what kind of variations? How is this ancient Jewish woman s life interpreted in various global contexts? The research for Esther s Legacy led to some surprising results. First was the way in which local culture affects the meaning of the holiday. An example is the story of Marina Fromer:

Stalin died on Purim, in 1953, in March. I was only five and lived in Leningrad. I did not understand why everyone around me was crying: neighbors, pupils, teachers.
That was in the morning.
In the evening of that same day, my uncle stormed into our room and shouted: Der gazlen geshtorbn -The villain is dead! He then turned to me and told me the story of Purim. He explained that it was symbolic, that it was fitting. For the Jews, this was Purim, and Stalin, Haman of our present days in Russia, was dead. From that day on, I knew and remembered the story of Purim, and of Russia.

Pleased with the work we did on Purim, we decided to open another female-centered door into worldwide Jewish life-the bat mitzvah. Do Jewish girls around the world celebrate a bat mitzvah? Who does and who doesn t, and why? And how do the celebrations vary?
This book is organized into nine regions: Africa; Asia; Australia and New Zealand; the Caribbean; Europe; the former Soviet Union, former Yugoslavia, and Eastern Europe; Latin America; the Middle East and North Africa; and North America. It may be surprising to learn that Jews live in some of these areas and that their community is organized enough and their members identified enough to initiate girls into Jewish adulthood via a bat mitzvah ceremony. Although some of the communities exist only in memory at this point, those memories have an impact on how people live today, and so these stories need to be retained. In addition, many countries have changed their borders or their names, or disappeared altogether. For example, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and East Germany do not exist anymore but have divided into many smaller countries (in the case of the former two) or been absorbed by another (in the latter case). Boundaries, people, and customs are constantly shifting. And in some cases, there are isolated Jewish communities where the people seem disconnected from shifting governmental boundaries while closely mirroring the non-Jewish local environment in which they live.
Just as each story in this collection is different, the introductions we have written also vary a great deal. Some will tell you about the history of the Jewish community. Some will focus on the community s relationships to the Holocaust or to the state of Israel, while others will explain the local customs about girls in general and how these affect Jewish girls. We tend to give more information about Jewish communities that are relatively unknown than about those that are familiar. Finally, we encourage everyone who reads this book to explore these Jewish communities further. The list for further reading at the end of this book is a good place to start.
A word about language: bat means daughter in Hebrew, and mitzvah means commandment or Jewish responsibility. A girl who has accepted her responsibilities as a Jewish adult is called a bat mitzvah. The occasion on which this occurs is also called the bat mitzvah, or the bat mitzvah ceremony, although according to Jewish law, a girl becomes a bat mitzvah regardless of whether or not there is any ceremony marking the occasion. The plural is b not mitzvah, meaning daughters of the commandment. In some cases in this book, the authors of the bat mitzvah accounts use the English plural bat mitzvahs. We have not changed their usage. In a similar vein, we have not standardized the transliteration of Hebrew words, which varies from region to region. For example, in Spanish-speaking Latin America, the guttural sound that is most often written as ch in English is usually written as j . Translations of frequently used Hebrew and Yiddish wor