Keeping up with the Steiners: The Sequel

We had a lot of challenges in making Sahar’s bat mitzvah a success. Maya’s bat mitzvah felt magical. Our whole community came out to Beth Hillel to cheer as we welcomed her into the responsibilities of adult Jewish life. Now in Israel, significantly poorer than we were a mere year and a half ago, with a smaller community much less interested in Jewish ritual, we had to make this feel equally special.
Together with Sahar, we chose to do the entire enterprise in a small Bedouin camp called Khan HaShayarot in the Negev desert near the Ramon crater. The decision was brilliant. This location oozed symbolism. We were five minutes south of David Ben Gurion’s desert home, a place where my mother, as a teenager, ate dinner with Israel’s first prime minister during a trip she was on to break ground at the ORT school my grandfather helped build. Likewise, we were probably camping on land the patriarchs had traversed numerous times as they shepherded their flocks. Maybe this was one of those places that Abraham heard God’s call. Ideally, an echo remained for my daughter’s ears.
Our bus left North Tel-Aviv with twenty six kids from Sahar and Itamar’s school in the Lamed neighborhood and another twenty plus family members and friends who chose not to drive the three hour journey on their own. I drove our fifteen year old Mitsubishi station wagon but heard reports of the noisy drive which included a viewing of the movie Madagascar with Hebrew subtitles. They stopped twice along the way, which is not atypical for Israelis who are not used to traveling such long distances.
Upon arrival, everyone disembarked and unloaded their things from the bus. Some of the older guests ordered cabins at the Khan, while most of us planned to stay in the mahal, the Bedouin tent, which was large enough to contain a full basketball court and beautiful enough to be part of the set in an epic desert movie. Shortly after we arrived and settled in, we sat down to eat. Of course, this meant finding a spot on a mattress on the ground, around a big round table, which served five or six. The chicken came out whole, on trays loaded with rice and roasted potatoes, onions and peppers. The rest of the table was filled with various Bedouin salads. I am certain the food was good because my mother in law must have told me so five times how much she liked it, and she knows food. My father in law only eats at home, and I, who had the pleasure of eating couscous in Morocco, would prefer Safta Raquel’s couscous any day. Her seal of approval means much more than that of the Chicago public television show Check Please or any newspaper review. And she wasn’t alone. Everybody loved their dinner.
Dessert was less appreciated but good. We had baklava and tea. People got dressed in their party clothes and the entertainment set up their world music show. They unloaded about thirty drums, set up a screen for our montage, broke out the sound system and lights. The party was set and the guests were ready. We passed out instruments and had an incredible drum roll as the guest of honor entered the tent. The entertainers taught everyone how to play their drums. We sang. There was belly dancing, and my wife was the leader of the pack. She even brought her special belly dancing waist wrap with the Middle East equivalent of rhinestones. After the show, we danced the night away and then sat down for a montage about Sahar’s life. As a video editor, I felt compelled to produce something beyond a Power Point slide show. I was also bound by the montage I made for Maya’s bat mitzvah, and had to include humorous film clips. I included something from Borat, which I had also done for Maya, and I put in a scene from Joshua Then and Now, a movie based on a Mordechai Richler novel, in which the Mafioso father explains to his son that the Ten Commandments is like a test and, “If you get 8 out of 10, you’re in the top of the class.” Everyone loved the montage. Next, we went outside, under a star covered sky, roasted marshmallows and sang along with my guitar wielding classmate Uri Allen, who very generously came to make the evening special and accompany Sahar during the service.
If there was one downside to the bat mitzvah, it was sleeping in a tent with twenty seven kids from north Tel-Aviv. These kids don’t recognize dust in their own homes, let alone sand on the desert floor. Many of them had never slept away from home. All of them were trained by Israeli society to be rambunctious and not respectful of authority, and they were far from being ideal tent mates. For Irit and me, it was a challenge to be somewhat firm and have the kids respect the others in the tent who wanted to sleep and to not make Sahar look bad in front of her friends. Fortunately, we had Sahar sleep in a cabin with her grandparents, which gave us a little more freedom to be firm.
Breakfast was at eight, and boy was it good. Fresh pita made on a Bedouin tarboon, eggs, labaneh and other cheeses, vegetable salad… We left time for the possibility of guests coming just for the service and were happy to welcome Irit’s cousin Galit and her family from Pardes Hanna. They drove 4 hours just to celebrate with us. There were many things about the ceremony that were spectacular. My classmate, Josh Ladon, who is training to be a rabbi, proved that he will excel in his choice of vocation. Another classmate, Shoshi Rosenbaum, who wants to be a cantor and trained Sahar in reading Torah and the prayers, added a ton with her beautiful voice and reassuring presence for Sahar. I found it particularly interesting that we were praying on ground that Abraham, Sahar, Leah, Rivka, Rachel, Isaac, Jacob, Hagar and Ishmael, among many others, had prayed on, and that at the time of our prayers, we were randomly interrupted by the sounds of Israeli jets flying overhead. We also prayed facing north toward Jerusalem instead of our traditional East, and in our line of view were mountains, tents and a herd of camels.
Sahar gave a dvar Torah that hinted at a potential future in the rabbinate. She questioned how a God who got mad at the angels for rejoicing when Pharaoh’s army was destroyed, “When my creations are dying,…” could possibly ask Moses and the Jewish people to make animal sacrifices. She also lamented the current events which included the plan to lay a cornerstone of the third Temple. Sahar argued that she preferred Rabbinic Judaism which replaced sacrifice with “Torah, worship and acts of loving kindness.”
Near the end of the service, Irit and I gave Sahar the priestly blessing and I presented my own blessing for Sahar. Here is part of my blessing.

As your father, I want you to understand where I see myself in this binary, and what I would like for my children. I think that the decision to believe in God is much less important than what you think of that God. At the same time, I have great fear of those who believe in God and think they know Her absolute truth.
The way I have always lived my life is not to concern myself with God, but to act as if She is warm, generous, just, intelligent, merciful, loving and completely impotent in affecting my world. This way, I am forced to act as if the world rests on me and my fellow human beings. It also prevents me from getting angry at a God who allows so much evil and tragedy. Not concerning yourself with the question of God’s existence has freed me up to do my share of good in the world and I believe it will do the same for you.
That said, not believing in a commander means that you will have to find ways of understanding what a warm, generous, just, intelligent, merciful and loving God might want from you and you’ll have to figure it out with the people around you. This takes lots of skills and sensibilities which I am very proud to observe in your behavior.
I have always been proud to march beside you, whether it was for the rights of all loving couples to be able to get married legally, or for the sake of the victims of the fighting in Darfur, you have always had a keen sense of Justice and a call to action. These are among your best qualities.
But I see in you even more than an activist. You are a person who develops her skills in order to understand the world and express yourself in it. You don’t just read books, you devour them. You are also among the best young writers I know. In poetry and prose, you express yourself with passion and verve. You radiate your joy for life in dance and song, and your keen sense of fashion adds to the world’s beauty. These are amazing qualities that I hope you continue to pursue and your mother and I will continue to support in everyway we can.

At the end of the service, we ate cakes prepared by my mother in law, packed our things and loaded up the bus. Ironically, I was reminded of the end of the movie Jesus Christ Superstar when all the passion play actors loaded up their bus and left the desert. The whole ride home, I was kvelling. Sahar was amazing. The experience Irit and I created for our friends and family was perfect, and we were surrounded by love. What a way to bring a daughter into her adult Jewish life?

Two down, one to go.