I’ve watched this video a few times and I’m still not sure how I feel about this.
Did you catch that? Trevor’s already turned 13, and they’ve decided to throw him a “bar mitzvah — a Christian bar mitzvah.”
Pastor Brian shows Trevor and Tara the tallit Trevor will wear at the bar mitzvah party.
Here’s what I’ve figured out from the video:
They’re having a bar mitzvah as a party, not as a religious life cycle event.
Mom’s Christian, dad has “Jewish heritage” (my sources tell me he was Jewish and converted to Christianity) and is a Christian pastor in Atlanta.
Mom’s “done her research” and believes a key part of the bar mitzvah is a Torah-shaped cake. Dad adds that it should be “Christ in the Torah” (to mark Christianity’s Jewish heritage, I think?).
Mom tells us a bar mitzvah marks the transition from being “a 13-year-old boy to a man,” but more accurately it’s marking going from a 12-year-old boy to a man.
Dad frames this as “more than a marker of time, it’s a social event.”
Neither parent is Jewish, but they believe their son will grow to be the “first Jewish, black president” of the USA.
As I said, I’m a bit confused by this.
And, with that confusion, I can’t decide what I think of a “Christian bar mitzvah.” The bar mitzvah traditionally marks a boy (or girl) taking status as an adult in the Jewish community. With that, they’re now able to perform commandments (mitzvot) reserved for adults, like being counted in a prayer quorum (10 adults needed to form a minyan for prayer services). The question posed on twitter was, “blatant misuse of Jewish ritual or can we choose to borrow from other faiths? If so, how?”