Have Torah, will travel: Zoom mitzvahs adapt an ancient Jewish tradition for the pandemic

Traditionally, a bar mitzvah is held near a boy’s 13th birthday. In Jackson Rosen’s case, a short delay seemed prudent.

“He turned 13 in February,” his mother, Jodi, said. “I was worried about a snowstorm, so I picked an April date.”

Then, after a relatively balmy winter, their plans were scrapped instead by the coronavirus pandemic — which in addition to interrupting schools, restaurants, sports leagues, and concerts also derailed the voice-cracking, yarmulke-capped coming-of-age ritual that looms large in the life of Jewish tweens.

Simply delaying isn’t an easy choice, since boys and girls spend months or even years learning a date-specific section of the Torah, a sacred scroll that is read, a few paragraphs at a time, over the course of the year. (Many parents have invested similar amounts of time planning parties that cost tens of thousands of dollars.)

So some are going ahead with small ceremonies, or with virtual festivities — at a time when their congregations are already celebrating Zoom weddings, dialing in for Zoom funerals, and gathering in mourning for Zoom Shivas.

Others are postponing for months — or indefinitely — leaving kids to keep practicing the same Hebrew passages with their intricate melodies, or to reluctantly begin the process of learning new ones.

At Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel in Philadelphia, where Shabbat services have been suspended during the pandemic, one family opted to move the service to a weekday and stream it on Zoom — all participants streaming from their respective homes. Others have postponed, shifting to the same time next year, or opting to start over and learn a new Torah reading.

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“It’s the idea of this being less about a milestone birthday and more about taking responsibility for one’s place as an active member of the community,” Rabbi Abe Friedman said, encouraging families to make their decisions accordingly. “What matters is the child having an empowering, affirming experience of taking their place as a leader in the community.”

At Temple Beth Sholom in Cherry Hill, cantor Jen Cohen has been consulting with a congregant who is an epidemiologist, and letting families put off making decisions as they monitor changing government guidance. Some who have ceremonies scheduled for May or June are still debating. If they go to Zoom, Cohen said, “we just want to make it joyful and meaningful and all the things we would be if it was in our sanctuary.”

Aaron Nielsenshultz, director of the religious school at Congregation Beth Or in Ambler, said he decided to be flexible, allowing young people to recite the Torah portions from their original b’nai mitzvah dates. “It may not be the most traditional way to look at how you do Torah reading,” he said. “But this is not the most traditional time.”

Now, dozens of students there are in such a holding pattern.

Samantha Drossner, who was planning a big Penn State-themed bash for son Ryan’s bar mitzvah in June (they’re a family of Jewish Nittany Lions, she explained), reluctantly put the brakes on a party for 220 guests that had been three years in the making.

“The bar mitzvah was sort of a light at the end of the tunnel: We were going to get through this whole coronavirus and celebrate with friends and family in June. When the rabbi called to recommend that we move things, I felt like that light had gone out,” said Drossner, of Blue Bell.

Cooper Murley, 13, of Wallingford, who was expecting family to travel from around the country for his June bar mitzvah, is also waiting — hoping he’ll get to complete the ceremony in September.

“It’s frustrating,” he said. “I wanted it to be as normal as it can be. But that usually means you have to wait longer. So you have to keep waiting until circumstances improve — and you’re not even sure they will improve.”

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His mother, Jamie Murley, is a cantor at Beth Or. Because of the size of the congregation, it was already doubling up services some Saturdays, clearing out the 9 a.m. bat mitzvah crowd so the 11 a.m. service could start. Now, whenever Sabbath services resume, she expects they will be stacked at least three deep.

But as likely “safe” dates recede further into the future, Murley and others are starting to expand their idea of what a bar or bat mitzvah looks like. Maybe go-karting for 100, or dinner and dancing for 220, isn’t essential.

“Through all kinds of stuff, the Holocaust and whatever else, Jews have practiced their Judaism,” she said. Refusing to postpone could be a way to continue that tradition, “to defy the coronavirus and say, ‘We’re going to be Jewish anyway.’”

Families like the Rosens provided the model: a modest ceremony in their Blue Bell backyard, with a few family members and friends watching from a safe distance, and an abbreviated reception in the form of a car parade, instead of the classic-rock-themed dance party they’d been planning for years, complete with swag featuring a Guns’N’Roses-inspired logo.

But about a week before the bar mitzvah, Jodi Rosen’s father, a physician, called to say he’d been exposed to the virus.

“He wouldn’t be able to be there,” she said. “So we ended up having a Zoom mitzvah.”

Michelle Shefsky, a Collegeville-based rabbi who had been tutoring Jackson, brought her Torah in its portable ark. Of about 30 students scheduled to complete b’nai mitzvah between March and June, she said, about two-thirds have postponed, and the rest are opting for small, socially distanced ceremonies. And of those, some still plan to have big parties, while others, uncertain of their financial futures, are seeking refunds.

The biggest compromise, she said, is that the requirements for a bar mitzvah are reading from the Torah and leading a service for at least 10 people; she decided those on Zoom could be counted toward that total. “It’s providing a mitzvah” — a good deed — “for all the people that are watching," she said.

For Jodi Rosen, watching the recorded Zoom session later, “it was amazing to see everyone stand up together at the same time, say the prayers together.”

After perhaps having allowed herself to get a bit carried away with party planning, “it kind of brought me back to what this is all about.”