Adult Bat Mitzvah

Marshall Weiss

The Dayton Jewish Observer

After raising three children to have Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, Mary Rita Weissman decided it was her turn.

Weissman — who became a Jew 25 years ago when she married her husband, Norm — chanted her Torah and Haftorah portions as well as the Musaf service at Beth Abraham Synagogue on Saturday, June 25 in celebration of their anniversary and her commitment to Judaism.

She says she began to seriously consider an adult Bat Mitzvah after her son Adam’s Bar Mitzvah in 2001.

“I said, ‘everyone else has done it, I ought to think about doing it,’” she recalls.

Her involvement as a student in Dayton’s Melton Adult Mini School also played an important role in her decision.

“It was the beginning of my more thorough understanding of my commitment to be a Jew by choice,” she says of Melton.

But Weissman says her daughter Jacqui puts it best: “She told me, ‘When some people have a mid-life crisis they have affairs, they buy a sports car — yours was to keep kosher.’”

A need to learn more

The more she learned about Judaism, the more Weissman realized how much more there was to learn.

“There is so much that I missed,” she says. “I couldn’t read Hebrew — I could only say the prayers by rote.”

Her first step was to enroll in a Hebrew crash course at Beth Abraham a few years ago. “I learned the letters, followed in the prayer book, got some words.”

Ultimately, she made the big decision to get serious about Bat Mitzvah study last year, with her eye on the summer of 2005.

The choice, she says, was based on a confluence of events: her 25th anniversary with Norm, and Jacqui’s graduation from college.

Weissman began teaching herself the Hebrew characters and in December started to learn her Torah and Haftorah portions. For the most part, she studied by herself.

Then the enormity of the project set in. “I said, ‘Oh my gosh, what have I done?’ I struggled. It’s different putting together the words.”

She didn’t learn trope, the musical markings for the Torah and Haftorah portions; she memorized the melodies from tapes made for her by Josh Zwelling, director of Judaics at Hillel Academy and principal of the Dayton Jewish School.

She says she wore out two tapes practicing.

“I probably listened to tapes for 200-250 hours,” Weissman says.

“I did nothing from January to June 25 other than work and studying for my Bat Mitzvah. I didn’t read a book or listen to NPR. When I was cooking dinner I’d listen through the headset.”

Soon, she discovered she wasn’t really reading Hebrew.

“To know a letter here of there is different from putting them together. I can read my Torah and Haftorah and prayers, but I don’t know what I’m reading. I taught myself to say the words.”

Along with way, she says she also discovered that “reading the Hebrew characters without understanding their meaning is all that the vast majority of Jews know how to do.”

She insists she will go beyond that.

A month before the big day, Weissman began studying with Beth Abraham’s Rabbi Bernard Barsky. Help also came from Zwelling, Hillel Academy Hebrew teacher Leslie Goldstein, Norm, and their son David.

For her discussion of the Torah portion during the service, Weissman says she relied on more than half a dozen Web sites.

‘An important, emotional milestone’

“I invited every single member of Beth Abraham who attends Shabbat services,” she says. “Sharing this with them and my family — brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews — that’s what I wanted. So many friends were there.”

But Weissman says she is only beginning her studies. Now, she’s ready to learn the trope and to truly understand Hebrew.

She has already embarked on this journey, reading the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) in English and Hebrew on her own. She is now working her way through Genesis.

“This was such an emotional, important milestone,” she says of her Bat Mitzvah.

“Judaism is the greatest gift I have ever received. Of course, I made the choice to become a Jew when I married Norm. And when I prepared for the children’s Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, I learned more.

“This was such an important thing to me. We make Shabbas every Friday. David went on a Birthright Israel trip this year. It was all a part of this. What I had was 1,000 times more than what I could’ve imagined. It all came from Norm.”

© 2005 The Dayton Jewish Observer