For adult b’nai mitzvah, ritual cements bond to faith

Laura Soble uses basic arithmetic to explain why, at the age of 39, she was one of 25 adult congregants of Temple Beth Hillel to become b'nai mitzvah earlier this month.

"Well," Soble clarified, "the way I look at it, this is really the third anniversary of my 13th birthday, so I'm right on time."

Of course, the reasons Soble and others participated in the group ceremony at Richmond's Reform synagogue are much more complex and layered than a play on numbers.

"Back in the early days of the Reform movement, ritual was abandoned in favor of intellect -- it was seen as a relic of the shtetl," said Beth Hillel's Rabbi Shelley Waldenburg.

Today, he said, Jews are returning to ritual because it provides them with a deeper, more personal connection to Judaism.

"Ritual positions people for intimacy," he said.

Beginning four years ago, the students took classes that combined ritual and intellect: They studied the basic tenets of Judaism along with Christian texts, eventually moving on to Jewish mysticism and the Book of Job -- all the while honing their Hebrew skills.

The end result was the mass ceremony, which involved almost one-fourth of the congregation's families. It was so large that it had to be moved to Oakland's Temple Sinai.

"The great thing about this simcha is that it allows people to go beyond the secular language of society and speak to one another as Jews," Waldenburg offered.

The haimish quality of the event was underscored when Beth Hillel member Deborah Grossman Koenig made tallitot for several of the b'nai mitzvah.

"Having my bat mitzvah with other adult congregants was much more rewarding than if I had done it alone," said Soble, whose upbringing did not provide a grounding in Jewish traditions. "The experiences we had mirrors the Torah portion we studied about loving our neighbor and finding holiness in community."

For congregant Doug Freifeld, 46, the experience of being a brand-new father and visiting his grandparents' birthplace of Vilna, Lithuania, laid the groundwork for a return to his Jewish roots.

During his visit to Eastern Europe, Freifeld also went to Russia to provide legal counsel under the auspices of the American Bar Association. He came back extremely shaken by the situation. While he was working in Moscow, the war in Kosovo was reaching its zenith.

"I was living across the street from the U.S. Embassy," and Russians were "paint-bombing the building," Freifeld recalled. "There was all kinds of graffiti sprayed on it -- including a Star of David pictured inside a dollar sign with a noose around its neck."

Milling around one of several demonstrations taking place outside the embassy, Freifeld was shocked to see copies of the infamous anti-Semitic tract "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" being hocked in several different languages.

"I'm in the land of my ancestors, and it's like cold water is being thrown in my face. Suddenly, I was in the shoes of someone who was hated, and I understood why my grandparents left," he said.

"I came to Russia to do good -- to see if I could make a difference. It didn't quite work out that way, but I experienced a closer connection to my roots that was solidified by the birth of my daughter and by getting my bar mitzvah."

Generational ties also played a large part in Renee Powell's decision to celebrate her bat mitzvah -- for the second time.

Powell, 41, had a bat mitzvah ceremony when she was 12, but at that time, it was what she describes as an "obligatory type of situation."

"There is no question that my call to the Torah is much deeper now," said Powell, "because I have much more of a spiritual hunger, and my roots to Judaism have gone so much deeper."

Saying that the "excruciating experience of childbirth" awakened her from a spiritual slumber -- she has two children, ages 8 and 11 -- Powell was inspired to celebrate her bat mitzvah as a way of forming a generational bridge between her grandmother, who was murdered in the Holocaust, and her daughter.

"The concept of l'dor vador, generation to generation, really stirs my Jewish soul," she said.

Powell never met her grandmother, but she still possesses a letter written by her grandmother while she was being transported to a death camp. In the letter, she pleads with her two sons, Powell's father and uncle, not to permanently hold a grudge against all of humankind for the atrocities of some.

"If my grandmother can hold that faith, writing a letter like that on the way to her death, then I can honor her by declaring, with my prayer shawl on, that I accept the faith of my ancestors," Powell said.

That faith is something she is unable to share with her father, who "felt abandoned by a higher power," she said.

"The wounds are too deep for my father, and his heart is so broken. I would like to be the generation that restores that faith, and offers reconciliation where the previous generation couldn't."