You are the Jewish parent of a young lass who is coming up on her 12th (or 13th, depending on which brand of Judaism you subscribe to) birthday. Unfortunately, your daughter is developmentally disabled and can’t read, and can’t understand the significance of the event.
Do you just… not have a Bat Mitzvah? Do you get some kind of dispensation (or the Judaic equivalent) from your rabbi? Or do you just go through the process without her participation?
Same for boys and the Bar Mitzvah.
First, you can be bar mitzvah at any age. It is just your first aliyah (call to the Torah). My uncle did it when he was 41 at his son’s bar mitzvah. I think there was some industrialist who did it at around 80. (When my uncle came back to his seat he found a gift-wrapped shape that he recognized as a fountain pen, that being a standard gift when he would have come of age.
That’s fact. Now my WAG would be that if a child was totally incapable of understanding the event, it just wouldn’t happen. He would never make that aliyah. It wouldn’t make him/her any less Jewish. If he were really just a bit slow, well it might take longer and could happen at 14 or 16 or whenever. I had a cousin who waited till 14 because he was…just slow.
Hmmm… As traditional, Jewish question asked on a Friday, but at least this time the OP got it in before sundown and the start of the Sabbath.
My limited understanding is that if a person is capable of participating in/having a bar/bat mitzvah then they should do so and the community is obligated to make reasonable accommodations for such an event. Which really means that it has to be decided on a case-by-case basis for each disabled individual.
What the bar/bat mitzvah really means is that the individual is now morally and ethically responsible for following Judaic laws and customs and morally responsible for his/her actions. Also able to lead prayer services, serve in a minyan, and otherwise fully participate in the religious community and rituals. You don’t have to be a genius to do all of the above and I suspect many people who are “developmentally disabled” would nonetheless be capable of the above.
It should also be pointed out that a bar/bat mitzvah can occur later than 13/12 (in many segments of Judaism girls get their ceremony a year earlier than the boys). So if you have a child that requires additional years to achieve the same milestone that would certainly be allowed.
And finally… if there is a child who is so disabled as to not be morally responsible for him/herself then, well, Judaism does have a practical side. Such a person would remain a child/minor in most ways (including secular and legal ways) and probably would not be able to fulfill the requirements of a bar/bat mitzvah. It would be considered most proper to involve the person as fully as possible in community life, but if they aren’t capable of something they aren’t capable.
And… ninja’d by Hari.
If you google developmentally disabled bar mitzvah you’ll find lots of articles discussing how various parents have adapted or skipped the traditional ceremony to accommodate the particulars of their own children. There is no possible one answer.
Liberal synagogues would probably find a way to accommodate the kid, while I’d expect that the more traditional ones would forgo it altogether.
As a general rule, Judaism tends to understand that, where the Law conflicts with a person’s genuine limitations, the person should come out on top.
Some serious misunderstandings here about the nature of “Bar/Bat Mitzvah” in Judaism. I’ll tackle these in the context of prior posts.
HeyHomie:
There is no “process” for which one would need “dispensation.” A mentally competent 13-year-old (and, among the Orthodox, 12-year-old, for girls) becomes (not “has”) a Bar or Bat Mitzvah as soon as that birthday occurs. The term means that the young man/woman is now considered responsible for performing their Judaic religious obligations (however defined by their particular variant of Judaism). No ceremony is necessary for these obligations to take effect, it is contingent upon the assumption that as of that age, they have the ability to make intelligent moral decisions.
As such, the developmentally disabled (to the degree of irresponsiblity) never become Bar or Bat Mitzvah. A mentally incompetent adult is, in the eyes of Jewish law, no more capable of making intelligent moral decisions than a child.
That said, there is a custom to mark the passage into adulthood…
Hari Seldon:
While it is customary to give a boy who has just achieved the age of Bar Mitzvah (and, in non-Orthodox circles, a girl of Bat Mitzvah age as well) an aliyah, this is not a rite required for passage, but an INDICATION of the passage that has already naturally occurred. When one is called to the Torah, they are acting as an agent for the entire congregation in fulfilling their obligation to read the Torah portion. A principle in Judaic law is that one who is not himself (or herself) obligated cannot be an agent to discharge the obligation of one who is. So by being called to the Torah as the congregation’s agent, that is publicly demonstrating that the teenager in question is ALREADY Bar/Bat Mitzvah. Of course, one who has not had an Aliyah immediately upon achieving the age of Bar/Bat Mitzvah can always get one later, because that person has not forfeited the adult status.
An Orthodox congregation would not call a developmentally disabled 13-year-old (who is, as per the above, not really Bar Mitzvah) to an obligatory (for the congregation) Aliyah for the Torah, but they might find some alternative ceremonial activity (maybe a repetition of a Torah passage already properly read) to make him feel good. That’s probably between the parents and the rabbi to arrange. I do not know what non-Orthodox congregations would do for a developmentally disabled 13-year-old.
Johnny Bravo:
They’d certainly forgo the traditional Aliyah, but they’re very likely to mark the occasion with some sort of synagogue event and with a party. My oldest son had a classmate who had a twin brother with severe mental disabilities. When the family held the Bar Mitzvah party, both brothers’ names were on the invitations, and both were included in all of the dances and the like.
What he said.
I tutored a boy who was severely dyslexic. He was called for an aliyah, and gave a drash, as was tradition in the congregation, and he memorized his maftir, and had someone else point to it. The portion was not the one closest to his birthday, but was chosen because the maftir was very short. He did not read the haftarah.
That’s an example of the adaptations made for someone with, in the spectrum of disabilities, minor ones. His dyslexia was severe as far as dyslexia went, but nothing was wrong with his mental faculties.
I know another young man who is the son of a rabbi, and marked his bar mitzvah at age 25. He is autistic. His father said he wasn’t sure the day would come, but he was confident that his son fully understood at this point what it meant to be responsible for the mitzvot, and he was truly a bar mitzvah, even though he was not one at 13.
This underlines cmkeller’s point that you don’t “have” a bar mitzvah, you “become” one. This same young man also eventually got a driver’s license, but not until age 27. He’d had a learner’s permit since age 23 or 24, but wasn’t ready to be driving on his own until he was 27, and a lot of that was his own input.
Anyway, someone not capable of performing ANY duties of a bar mitzvah will not become one. If someone does not understand why we fast on Yom Kippur, or even that the fast is a tradition everyone participates in, it is cruel to withhold food from that person for 25 hours. I don’t know anyone who would do it. I wouldn’t. An autistic meltdown because the person has no idea why he is being denied food isn’t really any different, as far as whether it is OK to feed the person under Jewish law, from a person with hypoglycemia who passes out.
Additionally, someone who will always need another person to, for example, make sure his food is kosher, is not a bar mitzvah, no matter how old he is.
That said, a first aliyah is a simcha, a thing to celebrate. It usually happens around the time you become bar or bat mitzvah, but it can happen later. I know lots of women who had their first aliyot as adults, and had big simchats. Nothing wrong with that. It’s sometimes called an “adult bat mitzvah,” but that is a misnomer. I understand why people call it that, though. But the only people who literally become b’nei mitzvah as adults are converts.