My Bar-Mitzvah
Yesterday was the anniversary of my Bar Mitzvah and some months ago I got the notion to stand up in front of the congregation and do it again. Typically the Bar-Mitzvah Boy is twelve years old, learns enough of the original Hebrew to sing in public the weekly bible portion of the week, leads part of the service, stands up public as a member of the community and finally provides a thoughful analysis of the chapter or verses he just read aloud. As a newly minted 13 year old I did a lot more. Yet, I had to read a speech I had no part in creating - back then the Rabbi wrote the speech.
What I discovered in these weeks of new training is that my mind doesn't have the flexibility it once did. I pretty much remembered everything I'd learned in my original training but anything new, such as the new portion of the bible, and some new prayers - forget it, I couldn't remember the Hebrew words or the classic special tune. I tried mightily in training, but finally two days prior I understood the Hebrew just wasn't going to happen. My speech, though, that was a wonder.
The main portion of the week is Leviticus: 14 - pages of loving details about how to cleanse a leper. ~ Boring! ~ But within that, in the process of agonizing specifics of two sheep, semolina flour, oil on the earlobe, and a dove, there is the open love of a community reflecting a path to cleanliness and a way to return.
The week's 'haftorah' was the delicious Kings 2:7 - four hungry lepers on the West Bank, locked out of a starving city under siege. They decide to try their luck with the enemy army holding the city. When they get there the tents are empty. The lepers loot gold and clothes and in the middle they get the notion to tell the beseiged King that the enemy has fled. The King responds, food is plentiful, the city is saved. The King's trusted friend is crushed to death by the mobs of starving people running to loot food from the empty enemy tents.
Good think those lepers, outcast by the city, decided to tell the city anyway. Sometimes love comes through.