3 min read
ByNoa Gendler, Noa Gendler
Two weeks ago I wrote about how the gifts my brother and I received for our bat and bar mitzvahs made an impact on me , and it got me thinking about another crucial gender-based difference in our experiences. I celebrated my bat mitzvah at twelve, and he celebrated his bar mitzvah at thirteen.
I was proud of what I’d achieved, at the time. I leyned Rishon, Maftir and Haftorah – certainly more than most girls do, but an average amount for a girl at my shul, which has a strong egalitarian minyan alongside a non-egalitarian one. I also did a d’var Torah, sang Anim Zemirot, and lead the Kiddush. But two years later, my brother did the same things and more, learning to leyn almost his entire parashah and doing an extended project on the history of Jews in Thessaloniki with his teacher. For his bar mitzvah he went to Greece with our dad. I wondered why I hadn’t done the same thing two years earlier.
I raised this recently with my mum. “Why did Gabriel do so much more than me?” I asked. “Where did that whole plan for him come from?”
She told me she thought there were a few reasons. Firstly, the teacher that I had, excellent as he was, was much more concerned with making sure I was perfect at the basics and not adding any further pressure. Mum told me it was hard to persuade him even to let me learn Rishon, which was not standard procedure. My brother’s teacher, on the other hand, was more than happy to be unorthodox. They took on a huge amount and it paid off.
Secondly, she told me, it was to do with me being the oldest, and therefore the guinea pig. Before me, they didn’t really know what was manageable, what was sensible, what was realistic, or what would be an appropriate challenge. But they learned throughout my process what worked and what didn’t, and knew how to get more out of it, so my brother was able to be more experimental.
But the most crucial difference, we both agreed, was that he was a year older than I had been when he had his bar mitzvah. We both started studying for it in Year 6, and I turned twelve a year and a half after that – but he didn’t turn thirteen until the end of Year 8, which meant that he had twice as long to prepare as I did. And I suppose it’s all very well in shuls where girls don’t leyn at their bat mitzvah, but at mine, where the same is expected from boys and girls, it seems bizarre that we’re given significantly less time.
There are other problems with the age difference, too. At my bat mitzvah, I’d barely started secondary school, and had been hugely shaken up by the change. I didn’t know who I was friends with, hadn’t learned how to deal with an increased workload, and really didn’t need the extra pressure of a big grand performance ahead of me. But my little brother was well and truly settled by the time he celebrated his, which was certainly an advantage. And in the interests of our shul’s egalitarian values, I studied for my bat mitzvah with the boys who were having theirs at the same time – that is to say, boys who were a year older. Girls’-school educated as I was, I found this quite distracting and spent most of my bat mitzvah classes being told off for giggling. The boys didn’t struggle with concentrating because none of them were remotely interested in me.
Now I look back and think how unfair that system is. No wonder my brother seemed to be able to do more with his time – he had more time, and he’d actually done some growing up by the time he got there. People say girls mature earlier and that’s why we have our bat mitzvah first, but I think that’s asking an awful lot from 11-year-old girls.
Noa Gendler has just graduated from the University of Cambridge, where she studied English Literature. Before that she attended North London Collegiate School. She is a seasoned Limmudnik and is involved in Marom, the Masorti young adult community.She previously wrote for the JC's Student Views blog