More in ‘bar mitzvah’

• James Hoge, the broadly respected editor of Foreign Affairs, will become the new head of Human Rights Watch. The group has been accused in the past of an anti-Israel bias. [Laura Rozen]
• Elie Wiesel says he “would not shed a tear” if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad died. [Haaretz]
• A dispatch describes the fledgling Jewish community of ...

Like many adolescents before her, Tessa Rothfeld put in a lot of time preparing for her bat mitzvah last November. She studied her Torah portion, and she practiced other parts of the service she’d seen peers perform at Congregation Ohav Shalom, a Conservative synagogue in Cincinnati, Ohio. But Tessa also had to learn some liturgy that was less familiar to her: the rites surrounding havdalah, the service that marks the end of Shabbat and the transition back to the work week. Her family had opted to have her bat mitzvah on Saturday evening, meaning that it would encompass the trio of late-day Sabbath services—mincha, maariv, and havdalah—rather than the typical morning Sabbath service of shacharit.

Becoming a bar mitzvah is about becoming a man, of course. However, every so often it’s alleged that, these days, part of that man-becoming process involves, well, a different rite of passage: receiving oral sex from female contemporaries. Sometimes the act is presented as a private “present,” but, in some fantastic versions, it is part ...

Dimdim is a free Web video-conferencing service, clearly aimed at the business world–an easy way to exchange PowerPoints and the like. But according to a press release that arrived in our in-boxes this morning, Dimdim’s service may be good for something else: the virtual b’nai mitzvah! “As long as all Dimdim invited guests have a ...

• Ten students on a Birthright trip to Israel came down with swine flu and then passed it on to 18 IDF soldiers. The organization, which not-so-subtly promotes hooking up within the faith, should be relieved it wasn’t something worse. [Forward]
• A British couple is suing their neighbors for installing motion-sensor lights that keep the ...

A few months ago, an email message began circulating among religious scholars: “Film studio looking for someone to teach non-Jewish 13-year-old actor a haftorah portion for Todd Solondz movie bar mitzvah scene.” Since few details about this movie have been made public, it’s hard to know what Solondz—the indie auteur whose films have gotten progressively ...

I must have been 9 or 10 the summer I read Seymour, the Formerly Fearful, by Eve Feldman, about a boy who dreads sports, swimming, and summer camp—in other words, my literary doppelganger—until Pesach, his older Israeli cousin fresh out of the army, comes for a visit.
Until then, I knew Israel only through the cousins ...

In her new book, Inventing Jewish Ritual, Vanessa L. Ochs, a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, looks at the recent proliferation of so-called Jewish rituals, ranging from the innovative (infertility rites) to the ridiculous

(“bark mitzvahs”). She also guides readers in creating their own traditions, and explores how traditional communities can move ...

Three days after the bar mitzvah, still somewhat high from Erez’s success, I got a call from the head of the middle school he attends, saying I should come right over. Erez had gotten himself in trouble.
Rushing the ten blocks, I thought how brief his newfound maturity had proved. And what kind of maturity was ...