Our third grandchild,
Gabriella, will soon celebrate her 12th birthday. Traditionally, boys
celebrate their coming of age (Bar
Mitzvah) at age 13 while for girls this (Bat Mitzvah) occurs at age 12.
Traditional Judaism
assigns different responsibilities to males and females. While most boys
celebrate Bar Mitzvah by
participating in synagogue ritual activities, girls’ families can make any
number of decisions about how to celebrate. Last year, when our first
granddaughter Eliana became a Bat Mitzvah,
her family hosted a wonderful luncheon at which Eliana and a number of
relatives gave moving speeches. Joshua turned 13 about a month later, and he
had a fairly traditional celebration that included reading from the Torah scroll on Shabbat morning.
Ella is combining elements
of both of these. On the weekend of her 12th birthday in June, she plans
to lead women in the Friday evening service that welcomes Shabbat and will
participate in a Saturday afternoon women’s prayer service during which she
will read from a Torah scroll. In
addition to these activities, like many of the young celebrants she knows, she
wanted to find something special that she could do to mark this occasion. She
found a way to quite literally give of herself: cutting her long hair and
donating it an organization that makes and distributes wigs to women and girls
who are undergoing chemotherapy.
Her hair was cut on Sunday afternoon. Here are “before” and “after” pictures from the back:
Here is Ella in one of the outfits she plans to wear.
I just can’t stop singing that song from “Fiddler on the Roof.”
And then, of course, there’s the Crosby Stills and Nash song.
We are so proud of Ella for sharing herself so lovingly.
Love,
Rebecca
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