I’ve watched this video a few times and I’m still not sure how I feel about this.

Did you catch that? Trevor’s already turned 13, and they’ve decided to throw him a “bar mitzvah — a Christian bar mitzvah.”

Here’s what I’ve figured out from the video:

• They’re having a bar mitzvah as a party, not as a religious life cycle event.
• Mom’s Christian, dad has “Jewish heritage” (my sources tell me he was Jewish and converted to Christianity) and is a Christian pastor in Atlanta.
• Mom’s “done her research” and believes a key part of the bar mitzvah is a Torah-shaped cake. Dad adds that it should be “Christ in the Torah” (to mark Christianity’s Jewish heritage, I think?).
• Mom tells us a bar mitzvah marks the transition from being “a 13-year-old boy to a man,” but more accurately it’s marking going from a 12-year-old boy to a man.
• Dad frames this as “more than a marker of time, it’s a social event.”
• Neither parent is Jewish, but they believe their son will grow to be the “first Jewish, black president” of the USA.

As I said, I’m a bit confused by this.

And, with that confusion, I can’t decide what I think of a “Christian bar mitzvah.” The bar mitzvah traditionally marks a boy (or girl) taking status as an adult in the Jewish community. With that, they’re now able to perform commandments (mitzvot) reserved for adults, like being counted in a prayer quorum (10 adults needed to form a minyan for prayer services). The question posed on twitter was, “blatant misuse of Jewish ritual or can we choose to borrow from other faiths? If so, how?”

What do you think?