My Bar Mitzvah Sermon

[A sermon I gave for my bar mitzvah, celebrated on December 26, 2009 / Tevet 9, 5770. Why a bar mitzvah at my age? The sermon answers this question. Posted at the instigation of my cousin-in-law, Matthew Pliskin.]

As I stand here today at the age of 34, celebrating my bar mitzvah, many of you will no doubt be asking, “Why so late?” I do so because it has been 13 years since I converted to Judaism. While an adult convert remains an adult, it nevertheless seemed appropriate to mark the anniversary. I would like to reflect for a few minutes on why I became a Jew, and then draw some tentative inferences. My path to Judaism was not the one of the religious seeker, drawn by its beauty and insight, nor that of the person drawn to Judaism through their beloved. Rather, I was born in the ambiguous position of the child of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother, raised in no religion. My religious education, such as it was, consisted of going to Easter services at a Catholic cathedral, midday services at a high church Anglican congregation, and Saturday morning services at a synagogue at about age seven. I knew I belonged in the synagogue, and that feeling never left me. I have no idea why I felt Jewish, not Catholic. My family was culturally Christian, with a Christmas tree and an Easter egg hunt, not a hanukkiah and a seder. This is not, perhaps, a surprise as my mother, bitterly resent it though she may, went to a Catholic boarding school and then college, while my father was sent to the rabbi once a week in the year before his bar mitzvah. I felt closer to my Hungarian lapsed Catholic grandmother than my Viennese secular Jewish grandmother. Even today, daraszfesek moves me in ways babka never will. Nevertheless, there is a yawning chasm, for the child of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, between feeling Jewish and being a Jew. Two things made possible this transition: the Australasian Union of Jewish Students and a first year class in Jewish Civilisation, Thought, and Culture at the University of Sydney. The class was intellectually exciting and started filling in what I had never learned. The Union of Jewish Students gave me the social ties to other Jews that I had never had. I set the process of conversion in motion at the beginning of my second year of college, having spent the summer in Israel with my great uncle Paul Avrahami, zichrono livracha, and my great aunt, Miriam Avrahami. Israel was again to play a role in my Jewish life a year later, when I met Jodi.

I had threatened to draw some lessons from my story, so let me inflict them on you.

First, intermarriage is too often seen in the Jewish community as the end of all Jewish life. It is not. The differences in outcomes we observe between the children of intermarriages who were raised as Jews and children of inmarriages are, for the most part, the product of the children of intermarriages having received less in the way of Jewish education and socialization and are not set in stone [see here and here for details]. Short of being brought up as a Christian, which happens in less than half of all intermarriages, I am the worst case scenario—I never even saw a lit menorah or sat at a seder as a child—yet I’m standing here today, have a Ph.D. in Jewish studies and sociology, and work at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University. Most children of intermarriages actually have a better chance than I do. So, when a family is interested in raising Jewish children, for goodness’ sake, help them out! Don’t question whether the children will “really” be Jewish or whether all Christian symbols are purged from their house.

Second, educate your children. My grandmother gave my father to a rabbi for one day a week for a year, yet had the temerity to tell the rabbi that he had failed when her son married a non-Jew. He never had a chance! Even if he had married a Jewish woman with as much education, I doubt my childhood would have been much more Jewish—what could they have taught me, if they themselves knew so little? Harping on the need to marry a Jew is of little utility, I suspect, and downright harmful when your actions, both in the education your child receives and the home they grow up, doesn’t speak of love of Judaism. In this vein, let me note that probably about half of all Jews by choice convert after marriage. I can’t prove it, but I doubt that many of these had in-laws who opposed the marriage in the first place or frowned on the couple.

Third, support Jewish life on the college campus. It is no surprise that I first reached out to the Jewish community while at college, because that’s when I acquired autonomy. For me, both Jewish studies and Jewish student organizations were critical. Had I been born a few years later, I would probably have said the same thing about Birthright Israel. This does not hold only for people like me, but for those raised as Jews, too. Decades ago, college life was not all that important—we could be sure that marriage and childbearing, following soon after graduation, would draw young adults back into the Jewish community. With extended delays before marriage and longer still before having children, college age programs like Birthright Israel are especially important. In the case of Birthright, my colleagues and I were able to demonstrate that, five to nine years after the trip, people who went on the trip were considerably more likely to marry Jews than those who did not [see here for details].

As I conclude, let me say that I doubt my story is all that unusual these days. Being at a college in a department focused on Jewish life, I have the privilege of being acquainted with many young adults, whether as a colleagues or students, and many of them came from mixed backgrounds not unlike my own. Like me, they are driven by a strong love of Judaism and the Jewish people that has been forged, not extinguished, by the winding road that led them hither, and I rejoice at the thought of what they will bring to Jewish life in the coming decades.

Thank you and Shabbat Shalom.