The subtitle of this book suggests its newsworthiness for revising an agreed-upon narrative, but in one way the author's argument aligns with a rather standard viewpoint: the bar/bat mitzvah is a rite of passage that drives Jewish congregational practice and indeed much of a Jew's childhood. Although High Holy Days might mark the Jewish ritual year and observant Jews view weddings and childbirth among lifecycle events critical to Jewish continuity, historically, sociologist Patricia Keer Munro asserts, “the ritual has changed how American Jews understand and engage with Judaism” (2). As a ritual, it affects many congregations' educational programming, the conduct of services, and Jewish community participation, and it justifies the characterization of what Munro calls the “bar and bat mitzvah complex.” Collectively, in her view it represents the “Jewish future” as a negotiation between tradition and modernity (1).
Munro does not have to dig deep to find rehearsals of functional analysis among both elder scholars and youthful participants. Sons and daughters announce the ritual manifestly as a coming-of-age experience, although a tension exists because of its relatively early arrival compared to the usual markers of maturity in American popular culture. Scholars also recognize ethnic, economic, and personal components of the party and social gatherings related to the event, and again can express a tension between the event's religious and secular meaning. What Munro offers, beyond these previous studies, is a delineation of different perspectives on the event from the point of view of parents, rabbis, youth, and congregants. She gives readers the voices of these participants through interviews as well as their viewpoints expressed in survey data, though the different social groups did not communicate these attitudes well to one another. She also presents their outlooks on the question of the ultimate meaning of the event, even if the participants cannot agree on its implied meanings. Having examined synagogues in the San Francisco Bay area, she argues the case for generalizing her conclusions to the entire country, emphasizing Reform practices. She conveys her findings and analysis dispassionately until the end, when she makes recommendations for improving the event to overcome its inherent tensions.
Munro summarizes four tensions embedded in the perceived meanings of the bar and bat mitzvah: (1) changing status associated with turning thirteen, (2) affirming Jewish identity, (3) completing an arduous religious task, and (4) flattering the individual student and his or her new status. In Munro's view, the collective social work of congregations has been to negotiate these tensions and elevate the bar and bat mitzvah to the exalted role of American Judaism's central ritual. This work has resulted in the reshaping of the American synagogue and indeed the American Jewish family. Analytical readers will recognize a clear social structural argument that suggests that the persistence of the event is explained by its maintenance, however fragile, of a social structure within a larger host society. Her recommendation for a better bar or bat mitzvah, rather than challenging the “complex,” is to integrate parents and students as family units in the ritual and thereby strengthen a sense of community. Echoing a frequently heard complaint, she also hopes for treating the event as a prologue to, rather than a finale of, one's Jewish education.
Munro's book is a good place to start for analysis of the ritual, especially considering the paucity of practice- or ethnography-based studies of an event that in her words “consumes so much time, energy, and imagination” for Jewish families and congregations (161). As any Jewish American parent can attest, there are abundant guides to the ritual, but few studies of the thought and action that constitute the performance of identity at such an odd time in the life course. To be sure, Munro builds on the historical insights of Ivan Marcus and Jonathan Sarna (though, strangely, not of Jenna Weissman Joselit) and mines the corroborative data of Stuart Schoenfeld, Barry A. Kosmin, and Ariela Keysar. Absent in the discussion of the bar and bat mitzvah's role in American Jewish contexts, however, is the psychological and folkloristic reinterpretation of the ritual as vernacular religion, especially for the boy, such as the classic psychoanalytic study of Jacob Arlow and the social psychological observations of Judith Davis, which in many analytic studies are critical interpretations. Munro presumes the categorization of the bar and bat mitzvah as a rite of passage, although challenges have been made to this view, with the result of a shift in analysis to the long process rather than an event that does not result in a status change. With its main title of “coming of age,” apparently invoking the anthropological importance of adolescent ritual in the life of a community, Munro does not get much beyond the bar and bat mitzvah performance to contextualize Jewish youth culture. One does not read about supportive or conflicting claims on youth of Jewish youth groups and community centers or, for that matter, a fuller accounting of alternative paths to the bnai mitzvah experience or rhetorical analysis of student and parental texts she creatively introduces. To be fair, Munro appears to recognize the limitations of her reporting. In a methodological appendix, she urges for more work to be done under the heading of “Future Research: Investigating the Missing Pieces.” Those suggestions include investigation of regional differences, understanding of specific practices, and broader behavioral data. For analysts calling for an understanding of Jewishness through the “thick description” (in the terminology of Clifford Geertz) or “depth psychology” (in more Freudian terms) of lived or vernacular religion, Munro's work adds admirably to the growing bookshelf, and the hope is that others will fill in those missing pieces she outlines.
