Challenges to Adults

Available for 28 days

One of my congregants, a mature woman, asked me last year if she could have a Bat Mitzvah, that Jewish coming-of-age ceremony that girls ordinarily undertake at the age of twelve. She explained that she missed out as a child, because her synagogue was traditional, and so denied girls the opportunity to perform this ritual. I said of course she could, and that I would develop a programme of study that would allow her to chant from the Torah scroll, and to sing a portion from the Prophets as set out in the liturgical calendar. We’re now meeting weekly, and rehearsing the passages that she’ll need to sing from the pulpit before friends and family. Undertaking these challenges as an adult is quite different from doing it as a child. The motivation is intensified: it fulfils a yearning for completion that I think most young people don’t think about as early teens. Also, the input of time and effort as a mature person, particularly if you haven’t kept up your Hebrew, competes with responsibilities of family, employment, and everything else that’s the substance of our daily existence. You have to want it more, and in maturity it becomes less about performance, and more about repair: a reclaiming of voice, confidence, and belonging that time or circumstances once withheld. O God who watches over us as we pass through the various stages of life, walk with us as we revisit unfinished chapters. Bless our striving, honour our perseverance, and help us trust that every sincere return is held tenderly in Your care. AMEN.