I get weekly emails from my synagogue, and, a few weeks ago, I noticed that there was a little paragraph tucked in between notices from the Sisterhood and requests for coat donations.  A bar/bat mitzvah meeting for parents of kids fourth thru sixth grade. It took me a minute, but I realized quickly that it meant me.  My daughter is in fourth grade.  It’s that time already?  Really?  Wasn’t it a week ago that I was pregnant with her and couldn’t fathom how she’d be able to have any kind of clear religious identity with a Jewish father and me?    Wasn’t it just the other day that I realized that while she was self identifying as Jewish the way she considered herself Irish but because I hadn’t converted, according to our synagogue, technically, she wasn’t Jewish? I didn’t think she’d really remember the mikveh, she was only five or six, but I remember it so vividly.  And suddenly – we’re there already.  A bat mitzvah.

And the more I thought about it, the more emotional I got.  Which isn’t surprising, I cry at pretty much every milestone.  Dance recitals, preschool graduations, her first real report card.  But a bat mitzvah seems like it’s so important.  Not only because she’s the first in my husband’s family, of her generation, to read from the Torah.  Not only because my family will come, of course they’ll come, but won’t have the foggiest idea what we’ll be doing.  But also because the bat mitzvah has so much meaning attached to it.  It’s coming right when I’m starting to realize that this baby girl, this tiny little baby of mine isn’t always going to be mine.  She’s her own person – and that’s terrifying and wonderful and, yeah, I’m welling up with tears as I’m writing.  I’m going to be in so much trouble with this…

That’s what the bat mitzvah is – it’s a public acknowledgement that we’re Jewish, and that Jessica is Jewish.  That she’s responsible for herself now, that she’s going to take ownership of her own religious identity in a way that I’ve been worrying about since before she was born.  What will her religious identity be?  She’s Jewish, yes, but not only Jewish.  She’s inherited a rich family tradition dating back thousands of years.  She’s also the product of my side of the family, a family filled with people who have no strong tie to any organized religion but a very strong and heartfelt connection to God.

She’s all intellectual questioning rules and ritual on the one hand, and on the other, she’s got a sincere and absolute relationship with God that, as far as I can see, she’s never doubted.  She blends both of us, the Jewish side from her father, and the spiritual intensity from me.  She’s got an extra dash of drama and wonder and intensity that’s all her own.  And it makes me cry.   I’m not sure if I’m crying because I’m grieving the loss of the little girl who’s growing up so fast, or if I’m crying because I’m so incredibly proud of the woman she’ll be.

When she was born, my husband picked out her Hebrew name.  It means “beautiful celebration.”   That’s what she’s always been for us, a celebration of love and life and so much joy.  And on her bat mitzvah, she’ll stand in front of our friends and family, and she’ll read from the Torah.  She’ll be exactly who she is.  And that’s amazing to me.