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Bat Mitzvah prep has begun in earnest at our house, which means that once a week, my 12-year-old daughter hides away in her bedroom, meets with her wonderful tutor over Zoom, and comes out knowing things her very own mother doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
This process will take a full year and is multi-pronged. She will learn to read Hebrew and chant trope (or the musical notes associated with the Hebrew letters). She will write a d\u2019var torah, a short sermon or interpretation of her Torah portion that she will read in front of the entire congregation. She will also engage in some sort of Mitzvah project, part of the Jewish call of Tikkun Olam, or repair of the world. In other words, she\u2019ll put her own interests to good use with some sort of volunteer project.<\/p>\n
The first meeting with her tutor went badly, as I had warned the tutor it might. My daughter was asked to read something in Hebrew, and when she couldn\u2019t, she started to cry, and judging from the pile of tissues I found next to her desk after the fact, cried the rest of the session. It wasn\u2019t just that the task itself seemed insurmountable. It was that the final goal \u2014 the privilege of chanting Torah with hundreds of eyes on you \u2014 scared this shy kid even more. When the session ended, she came out and wept until we had talked through it enough to move onto ice cream and an episode of The Summer I Turned Pretty<\/em>, her body slouched against mine, forever my baby.<\/p>\n When she came out of the second session smiling, I said, \u201cI guess when you cry on the first day, there\u2019s nowhere to go but up?\u201d She laughed and I laughed, but I said this knowing there will be many more tears shed (for both of us). Still, I wanted to give her a sense of hope. Isn\u2019t that what we all want when embarking on a long, slow journey whose end feels unreachable?<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n My parents are fervently anti-religious Jews, so \u201cBat Mitzvah\u201d was never uttered in our house growing up (I didn\u2019t even know about them until the 7th grade invites came in). That said, I did marry a Jewish man, and since moving to Los Angeles nine years ago, our family life has been guided and organized by a Jewish community<\/a>, which has surprised no one more than me, who, in my previous 37 years on earth, hadn\u2019t found much use for religion. Over the years that we\u2019ve been here, however, I\u2019ve come to depend not only on the friends from our shul, but also the rituals, traditions and rabbinical guidance<\/a> in the face of a crumbling world, so when it came to deciding on whether our daughter would have a Bat Mitzvah, there was never any question for us that she would.<\/p>\n Back when we first moved here, when I watched the barely-teens lead a quite substantial part of the Shabbat service, I was semi-shocked that they could do it \u2014 it was so hard and they had to learn so much Hebrew and then interpret such a difficult text! The feat has only become more impressive as my own daughter has gotten closer to that challenge. Compared to the preschooler who sat on my lap through services, the age 13 once seemed very grown up. Now, not so much.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n One of the great joys of having kids is to be awed by them, but while watching this year-long learning process unfold, I am moved by more than her grit and tenacity. I am touched by the fact that my preteen is being forced to participate in something that is entirely anathema to our quick-moving culture.<\/p>\n Preparing for a Bat Mitzvah is extremely slow moving. It is difficult and awkward and not of immediate use. In this way, it is different from studying French before a trip to Paris or learning to drive a stick shift. It is not optimizable; it doesn\u2019t fit in a reel or meme. There are no short-term rewards, other than the thrill of having memorized (or read or interpreted) a new line of text each week. There are absolutely no shortcuts, and it cannot be helped by a hack or app.<\/p>\n It is cumulative in the way only the very best things in life are \u2014 say, parenting, friendship, marriage.<\/p>\n And it has made me think deeply about what things are similar in my own life; pursuits that takes perseverance and patience and ingenuity. An avocation whose rewards are meager at first, but magically cumulative. <\/p>\n For me, this is novel-writing, but it could also be growing a garden, learning to knit, running long distances, or building an intentional community.<\/p>\n In my experience, writing a novel often feels as slow and meaningless as learning lines of ancient Hebrew, but it gives me something nothing else can: the satisfaction that I can do something demanding. It is a reminder that I can \u2014 that I should \u2014 be pushed to my limits; that that<\/em> is where the good stuff often lies.<\/p>\n Abigail Rasminsky<\/a> is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. She teaches creative writing at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and writes the weekly newsletter, People + Bodies<\/a>. She has also written for Cup of Jo on many topics, including marriage<\/a>, preteens<\/a>, perimenopause<\/a>, and only children<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n P.S. What has surprised me most about raising preteens<\/a>, and are you religious<\/a>?<\/p>\n (Photo by Eloisa Ramos\/Stocksy.)<\/p>\n