This past week I was privileged to be a part of the beautiful mother-daughter bat mitzvah event. One of my favorite parts of the event happens weeks before, and likewise happens a few weeks before the boys’ father- son bar mitzvah event. The students are met with and asked now that they have reached גיל המצוות and mitzvot truly count we are asking them to pick a mitzvah or a midda that they each want to work on. And, more importantly, they need to say what their practical plan is for working on that mitzvah or midda. Then their pledge is typed up on a label which is placed in the Chumash that they receive as a gift from the YPAA.
Each year during the lesson to choose that mitzvah/midda we show them a video by Mr. Charlie Haray and his son which discusses what makes being a bar/ bat mitzvah a monumental time and it is the ability to choose. It is the capacity to choose between good and evil. Strength in Judaism is not the ability to “benchpress” Mr. Harary's son says. But, strength is measured by how much you can overcome your desires for bad to do good, or overlook your needs to focus on the needs of others- to choose good over evil
At age 12/13 we each get a yetzer hatov. (As Avot D’Rabi Natan 16 states). What does that mean? The word yetzer comes from the word yatzar which means formed- it develops within us. When we are born we are totally selfish and only think about ourselves. Until 12/13 our yetzer is selfish and the root of evil is being selfish. But, at the age of bar/bat mitzvah we are given the gift of a “good inclination” Hashem gives our divine spark and our soul more power. That force inside is selfless. It reminds us to care about others, reach out to them and not only worry about ourselves. Only then can we actively choose to do mitzvot.
And, this is why at the age of bar/ bat mitzvah a person is obligated in mitzvot and mitzvot start to “count” as he/she can finally think about others, including G-d. Only once a person can think beyond himself can he have a relationship with G-d. Only then he has the ability to choose.
That is what bar/bat mitzvah is all about. That is why we ask our bnai and bnot mitzvah to choose a mitzvah or a midda, because for the first time they can choose to work on something and therefore it counts.
Choice is what true freedom is all about and is a pathway to fulfillment. This past week, we shared with our parent body the workshop facilitated by Ohel and Dr. Norman Blumenthal . Hope & Resilience: A Conversation with Dr. Edith Eger. I will speak more about that workshop another time, but Dr. Eger’s first book was called The Choice. Dr. Eger is a psychologist and a Holocaust survivor. She writes in her book regarding suffering in life, “...victimhood comes from the inside. No one can make you a victim but you. We become victims not because of what happens to us but when we choose to hold on to our victimization….We cannot choose to have a life free of hurt. But we can choose to be free, to escape the past, no matter what befalls us, and to embrace the possible. I invite you to make the choice to be free.”
Dr. Eger writes that one of her mentors was Dr. Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and also a Holocaust survivor and author of the book Man’s Search for Meaning. In our seventh grade Advisory class we do speak of Dr. Frankl and his philosophy as we discuss how to cope with difficulties in life. He notes, “Everything can be taken from a man or woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms- to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
We know that a fundamental belief in Judaism is בחירה חפשית freedom of choice. We raise our children with the self-confidence that they have the ability to choose the right path. It is up to them to choose. No one can choose for them. And, no one can force them to choose the bad path- no amount of peer pressure, or negative life circumstances can force their choice. Only they can choose.
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