A Moving Feast

Winner of the Goldberg Family Foundation Award 2021

What is the meaning of the Jewish rites of initiation known as "bar and bat mitzvah" in the modern age, when the concept of "mitzvah" (religious precept or obligation) means so little to most Jewish adolescents?

Hizky Shoham offers a comprehensive anthropological history of the bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies that seeks to understand why not only have these ceremonies been preserved, but are in fact celebrated by more Jewish families and demand greater financial, psychological, and family resources than ever before. The book maps and analyzes the transformation of the rituals in the modern age and endeavors to understand their meanings for the celebrants and other participants in the diverse historical contexts in which the ceremony appeared. Is it indeed a rite of initiation?

The book breaks new ground by placing the rise of the bar and bat mitzvah in the context of the general rise during the modern industrial age of a new system of life-cycle rituals: rituals that mark the passing of time by latching on to its artificial, conventional milestones. The child's 12th or 13th birthday functions as a temporal landmark in a personal biography that would otherwise move through homogeneous time.