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Call It English identifies the distinctive voice of Jewish American literature by recovering the multilingual Jewish culture that Jews brought to the United States in their creative encounter with English. In transnational readings of works from the late-nineteenth century to the present by both immigrant and postimmigrant generations, Hana Wirth-Nesher traces the evolution of Yiddish and Hebrew in modern Jewish American prose writing through dialect and accent, cross-cultural translations, and bilingual wordplay.

Families play a critical role in shaping children's orientation to Judaism, and decisions about Jewish education are made within the family unit. However, in most studies of Jewish education, individual students or parents serve as the unit of analysis, with families being omitted or relegated to the background. In this paper, I foreground the family through an ethnographic study to illustrate the complex negotiations that occur between family members about involvement in Hebrew school post b'nai mitzvah. By illustrating the dynamic interplay between family members, I show the internal and external struggles that family members experience as they negotiate their Jewish commitments, and the potential unintended consequences that might arise from such negotiations. I describe how negotiations about Jewish education can have potentially deleterious effects on family members' relationships, and how parenting philosophy and parenting style may shape negotiations about Hebrew school. My central goal in this paper is to advance a methodological argument about the value of taking a family systems perspective and using an ethnographic approach to understand families' decisions about Hebrew school and Jewish commitments more broadly.

  Among the memories: *Piven (who plays agent Ari Gold on HBO's Entourage): I had a big chubby bar mitzvah boy face and what was bordering on a mullet.

In addition to interviewing bat mitzvah girls and bar mitzvah boys and attending their ceremonies and their parties, [Mark Oppenheimer] talks to their mothers, fathers and family friends as well as their rabbis and tutors in an effort to understand the context in which these various b'nai mitzvah take place. He sorts out the denominations of Judaism, ponders the difficulties of the cantillation (chanting) of Torah, looks at the seemingly atavistic \"laying of tefillin\" (which involves ritualistically binding parts of the body with leather straps and small boxes containing Torah passages) and converses with \"Jews by choice\" about their decision to convert. He also travels to Temple Sinai in Lake Charles, La., where Jacob Ecker, 65, and Rena LeJeune, 63, both adult converts, are preparing for their late-in-life b'nai mitzvah ceremonies. And although on their big day their Hebrew pronunciation is somewhat less than perfect, each of them appears to be, Oppenheimer reports, \"terrifically proud.\" Thirteen and a day is the age of Jewish majority, traditionally observed by a boy's bar mitzvah ceremony and, more recently and sometimes at a slightly younger age, by a girl's bat mitzvah. These public and religious rites of passage, sometimes followed by parties of breathtaking lavishness, have become in the past 50 years or so a significant aspect of Jewish American life, even among the irreligious and assimilated. What's going on here? Why is it happening? Is it good for the Jews? And can it be done for less than $50,000? These are just some of the questions Mark Oppenheimer explores as he crisscrosses America in search of varieties of bar and bat mitzvah experiences.

Boris Fishman reviews the book \"Thirteen and a Day: The Bar and Bat Mitzvah Across America\" by Mark Oppenheimer.

With intimate access, this insightful film follows four diverse young Jewish people all celebrating their bar and bat mitzvahs in the same week. This uniquely Jewish rite of passage, marking a child's transition to adulthood within the faith, will be one of the most important nights of these 12 and 13-year-olds' lives. Each will be marking it with a special religious ceremony and a unique celebration - but these four celebrations – reflecting a range of Orthodox, Reform, Ashkenazi and Sephardi voices and traditions - couldn't look more different. With intimate access to the private celebrations of four young Jewish people, as the clock ticks down to this big week, Growing Up Jewish reveals the cultural and religious significance this milestone holds to each of them and what it means to a generation about to come of age.

For too many Jewish young people, bar/bat mitzvah has been the beginning of the end of their Jewish journeys. When students perceive the Torah as incomprehensible or irrelevant, many form the false impression that Judaism has nothing to say to them.Enter the game-changer: theJPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentaryshows teens in their own language how Torah addresses the issues in their world. The conversational tone is inviting and dignified, concise and substantial, direct and informative. The narrative summaries, \"big\" ideas, modeldivrei Torah,haftarotcommentaries, and discussion questions will engage teens in studying the Torah andhaftarot, in writingdivrei Torah, and in continuing to learn Torah throughout their lives-making itthebook every rabbi, cantor, parent, and tutor will also want to have.Jewish learning-for young people and adults-will never be the same.

This article is an anthropological history of the bar/bat mitzvah ceremony in the Yishuv and Israel of the 1940s and the 1950s, when this ceremony radically grew in terms of the space, time, and economic resources devoted to it, as well as expanded to include girls. To explain that shift, I suggest distinguishing classic rites of initiation from the system of life-cycle ceremonies typical of modern consumer culture, which emphasizes the transition between temporal markers rather than social statuses and imposes no task on the birthday celebrant. The article reconstructs the process by which, during the 1940s and the 1950s, the bar/bat mitzvah ceremony came to function more as an elaborate birthday party than as a rite of initiation. The historical reconstruction demonstrates how, during the late Mandate period and early years of statehood, a new grassroots Israeli culture emerged, shaped by the accommodation of Western consumer culture to Jewish traditions rather than by Zionist ideology or established religion.

The bar mitzvah ceremony was instituted by European Jews in the late Middle Ages as a rite of initiation that introduced young boys into the world of ritual obligations and Jewish literacy. In modern times, it has been seen by many as the Jewish equivalent of the male initiation rites of many cultures all over the world, through which the child enters the adult community by performing some dramatic, extreme, and one-time version of a routine activity of the men of his community. Here, Shoham discusses that dealing with prevalent cultural constructions that do not derive from some establishment but rather from the popular culture which the patrilineal tradition is deeply engrained in the collective consciousness of Jewish society in Israel.

This bold, pioneering book explores rites of passage in America by sifting through the accounts of influential thinkers who experienced them. Arthur J. Magida explains the underlying theologies, evolution, and actual practice of Jewish bar and bat mitzvahs, Christian confirmations, Hindu sacred thread ceremonies, Muslim shahadas and Zen jukai ceremonies. In rare interviews, renowned artists and intellectuals such as Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, holistic guru Deepak Chopra, singer Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), actress/comedienne Julia Sweeney, cartoonist Roz Chast, interfaith maven Huston Smith, and many more talk intimately about their religious backgrounds, the rites of passage they went through, and how these events shaped who they are today.Magida compares these coming of age ceremonies' origins and evolution, considers their ultimate meaning and purpose, and gauges how their meaning changes with individuals over time. He also examines innovative rites of passage that are now being \"invented\" in the United States. Passionate and lyrical, this absorbing book reveals our deep, ultimate need for coming-of-age events, especially in a society as fluid as ours.Conversations with: Bob Abernethy, Huston Smith, Julia Sweeney, Roz Chast, Harold Kushner, Ram Dass, Elie Wiesel, Deepak Chopra, Robert Thurman, Coleman Barks, Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), And others