Jewish Tradition and the
Lifecycle
Jewish lifecycle
rituals reflect a communal orientation, the democratic nature of traditions,
the relationship between the biological and the social, and the inevitability
of evolution and change.
By Rela M. Geffen
This article is excerpted from Celebration and Renewal: Rites of Passage
in Judaism (Jewish
Publication Society), and is
reprinted with permission.
The terms "celebration"and
"renewal" reflect Judaism's
positive perspective on the unending circle of life from conception through
death and back again to life through the continuity of the generations. Even at
the close of a period of mourning, one Jew says to another, "Af simchas"--let us come together
again at times of joy. Just after a baby boy undergoes the pain of
circumcision, the tension in the room is often released in laughter as the
person who names the baby, most often the mohel (ritual circumciser),
wishes his parents the joy of bringing their son to the wedding canopy.
What might easily be construed as a ludicrous
blessing for an eight-day-old infant actually reflects a communal orientation
filled with hope. The ritual belongs not only to the life story of those in the
child's immediate family; it also reminds those present of similar ceremonies
held at far-off times and places as well as of other birth ceremonies that they
themselves have attended. Thus this moment links them to other Jews across
space and time, tying their personal history with that of the Jewish people.
The
great French sociologist Emile Durkheim wrote about the importance of public
ritual life for maintaining and strengthening group norms. He noted, for
instance, that many people feel cheated when a bride and groom elope. Look
around at a wedding ceremony and you will see couples reliving their own special
moments. They may even mouth the words of the wedding formula or of
the seven
benedictions. It is the ritual familiarity of the ceremony that enhances its
power. The very routineness of the passage infuses it with communal and
historical meaning for the celebrants, while at the same time reinforcing
memories of similar moments in the lives of the congregation. Understanding
this aspect of human nature--the need to affirm family continuity within a
public context--the rabbis ordained that life's passages be marked in the
presence of a quorum, the minimum definition of community. For this reason,
circumcision, marriage, and kaddish
[recited by mourners] require the presence of a minyan.
The
Fundamentally Democratic Nature of Life Cycle Ritual
In addition to connecting the communal and private
histories of spectators and participants, life cycle rituals mark significant
life stages experienced by most human beings. These rituals, then, represent
the most democratic of ceremonials: They are the great levelers. The rabbis demonstrated
their understanding of such universality when they wrote in the Talmud (Moed
Katan 27a-b) that rich and poor alike should be buried on the simplest of biers
in plain shrouds. Like the Amish code, the rabbinic message conveyed the sense
that "plain" is the highest accolade. Thus the rabbis affirmed the
right of all members of society publicly to mark life cycle events with honor,
regardless of social class, gender or intellectual achievement.
The commandments recited in every
morning service from [the rabbinic texts] Mishnah Peah 1:1 and Shabbat
127a--that every Jewish community band together to dower poor brides, house
travelers, visit the sick, and escort the dead to the grave--exemplify the
democratic nature of these rituals. In reality, of course, there was always
some differentiation between rich and poor, not in the rituals themselves but
in the ceremonies that accompanied them. In late medieval and early modern
times, rabbis in some communities even had to invoke sumptuary laws restraining
ostentation. Nevertheless, the fundamentally egalitarian nature of life cycle
rituals continued, inhering in their universal availability to the community.
Biological
Passages and Social Inventions
Some life
cycle events, such as birth, puberty, illness, and death, mark passages that
are biologically determined, whereas others, such as adolescence, marriage,
divorce, and midlife, owe more to social invention. Over time, however, these
differentiations may disappear as social convention gains precedence over
biological determinism. For example, the fact that the legal status of Bar and
Bat Mitzvah originally marked the onset of puberty has become irrelevant to
their celebration now; but even so, the attempt by the Reform movement to
replace them with Confirmation at age eighteen and later sixteen proved
unsuccessful.
Within Jewish law these legal marking-off points
were in fact always fixed to a certain age regardless of the physical maturity
of an individual child (thus a girl reaches majority at age 12 or the
appearance of two pubic hairs), suggesting that there was always a sociological
as well as a biological definition of reaching the age of responsibility for
fulfilling the commandments.
The
Question of Universal Passages: The Necessity and Inevitability of Change
Theoretically, all Jews are entitled to celebrate
most public ritual ceremonies. Therefore, those who have been single and/or
childless and thus unable to participate in those ceremonies and rituals linked
to marriage and parenting--and for young men, Bar Mitzvah--have themselves felt
cheated while often being pitied by the community. Precisely because every Jew
felt entitled to participate in such events, those who missed out often
suffered a profound sense of deprivation. For women, the absence of rituals
surrounding marriage and childbearing, with their accompanying statuses of
wife and mother, led to feelings of isolation and loss. Until our own century,
the lack of a "coming of age" ceremony for girls such as the Bat
Mitzvah must have created some feelings of exclusion. Some men whose thirteenth
birthdays were ignored have felt the lack of this ceremony all their lives.
Thus we sometimes read of elderly Jewish men staging lavish Bar Mitzvah
ceremonies for themselves. (Armand Hammer was planning one just before he
died.)
Today,
assumptions about the natural progression and inevitability of life
cycle passages, particularly those based on the traditional nuclear family,
serve to distance some Jews from the community rather than bringing them closer
to it. Many contemporary Jewish families are not conventional in structure and
may feel that they do not "fit" into the community with its
traditional institutions and rituals. Divorced parents and stepparents may feel
uneasy at a Bar or Bat mitzvah or their children's wedding ceremonies.
Never-married singles and single parents may avoid certain communal occasions.
All this is further compounded in the case of a mixed marriage or remarriage.
Even when a spouse, parent, or stepparent converts to Judaism, the fact that
the extended family does not follow suit means that whole sets of relatives,
including grandparents or mothers- and fathers-in-law, may not relate to
important Jewish rituals.
Life cycle rituals are continually
evolving to suit new social roles; if they fail to do so, then over time they
cease to be the democratic constants that have always undergirded the Jewish
community. Of course, this process requires that the richness of tradition and
the historical and familial associations embedded in the rituals be balanced
with the need for change. Living as we do in an age of transition, we will
probably see many innovations tried but only a few retained as integral to the
living tradition.
Rela M. Geffen is
President of Baltimore Hebrew College and is on the editorial advisory
committee of Sh'ma
magazine.
