Becoming Bar/Bat Mitzvah at Kehilla Community Synagogue

At Kehilla, the Bar/Bat Mitzvah year is an immersion in Jewish learning and development. In its broadest terms, Kehilla’s Bar/Bat Mitzvah Program is designed to help its students come to their own understanding of what God, Judaism, and the Bar/Bat Mitzvah can mean to them personally through an encounter with basic texts, values, and ideas of Jewish teaching. Through this program, the students clarify their identity as Jews, and their connections to this rich heritage.

Kehilla’s non-didactic approach understands Bar/Bat Mitzvah as a process of growth, reflection, and meaningful exploration. It helps young Jews become more aware of their transition to Jewish adulthood and to envision the kind of adults they would like to become. Through the study of Torah, Hebrew, prayer, Jewish identities, and Jewish spirituality, students explore their own unique Jewishness and their particular relationship to the concept of God, to the Jewish people, to family, to community and to society as a whole. Students experiment with and make selective commitments to observing mitzvot – the instructions derived from the Torah and Jewish experience about how we manifest our values in our everyday practice.

The months that the student spends in concentrated study are celebrated in a Shabbat service in which the child reads from the Torah, presents a drash (teaching) to the community and participates in leading the congregation in prayer. The ceremony celebrates a Jewish young person’s becoming a contributing member of their family, spiritual community, and the Jewish people.

Kehilla Community Synagogue is part of the Jewish Renewal movement. This expanding international movement, begun in the 1960’s in several communities and by different spiritual leaders such as Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Arthur Waskow, and Kehilla’s Rabbi Burt Jacobson among many others, seeks to enliven Jewish spirituality for Jews living in a modern, mostly secular world.

At the heart of Jewish Renewal is an understanding that our contemporary experiences in Jewish community, and our increased emphasis on egalitarianism and inclusiveness need to be in a dynamic relationship with the lessons of past Jewish traditions. It is both poignant and reassuring to see young people, on the threshold of their lives as Jewish adults, assume the responsibilities and joys of becoming the Jews of the 21st century.

Supported by peers, teachers, parents, family members and the larger spiritual community, the young person becoming Bar/Bat Mitzvah will be empowered to be an active participant in shaping the future of the Jewish people.

Membership in Kehilla Community Synagogue and two years’ attendance in Kehilla School, level 5th & 6th grades, is a prerequisite to enrollment in the Bar/Bat Mitzvah program.

 The Bar/Bat Mitzvah Program includes:

• Classes of 1-3 students which support individualized learning as well as the development of personal relationships between students and teachers. 
• One-on-one study with the teacher
• Family Workshops
• Family Chavurote
•.Group Social Events
•  Student and Family Involvement in Designing the Shabbat Service
• Staff support for designing and planning a kiddush

All Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremonies are open to the public.  You are warmly invited to attend. You can find the dates on the Kehilla calendar.

The Bar/Bat Mitzvah Parents Handbook

Download a copy of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah Parents Handbook.

For further information or questions, email Sandra Razieli, Bar/Bat Mitzvah Program Director, at BBM@raziyoga.com or call (510) 547-2424, ext. 105.