Synopses & Reviews
You're in the process of planning your child's bar or bat mitzvah and unanticipated issues keep threatening the joy of this "joyous occasion."
Maybe you're divorced and you and your ex are fighting over how much this is all going to cost, never mind how you're going to handle the public awkwardness.
Or maybe your spouse isn't Jewish and the whole question of religious meaning is coming up all over again.
Or maybe you're worrying about your relatives' disapproval. They're from the city, and your plans for an informal party in the backyard will never meet their expectations.
You are in the thick of a complex and pressured moment in your life, sandwiched between the needs of your emerging teenager and your aging parents, dealing with your own issues about being old enough to be the parent of a Bar/Bat Mitzvah (you were always the kid at these affairs, weren't you?), while trying to orchestrate your child's formal coming-of-age in the Jewish community. What would be crazy is if you weren't feeling stressed...
For well over a decade, family therapist Judith Davis, Ed.D., has been studying the meaning of the bar/bat mitzvah in the lives of contemporary American Jewish families. In this wise and witty book, the first to focus on the psychological and development issues of the bar/bat mitzvah year, Dr. Davis shows you exactly what you can do to create magic and meaning for the whole family.
Review
"As a family therapist, I loved this book. Judy Davis is the first writer I now to take the best ideas from family therapy and weave them into a ceremony of ordinary life. The bar/bat mitzvah is a magical interlude of healing for the whole family and a beautiful example of how a life-cycle ritual can be used to transcend the hurts and differences that arise in any group. Judy has braided a challah of hope for everyone." --Lynn Hoffman, author of F
oundations of Family Therapy"This book is both an indispensable tool and a precious gift for every bar and bat mitzvah family. It is required reading. At last we have a manual for lay people detailing in easy and engaging language what every religious professional has known all along: that the dynamics of our extended families are the primary source not only of our joy and anxiety but also our best hope." --Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, author of Invisible Lines of Connection
"Thoughtful, helpful, and wise, Whose Bar/Bat Mitzvah Is This, Anyway? gives parents the great gift of perspective. Judith Davis writes about the emotional and developmental dimensions of this old-yet-new coming-of-age ritual that is ultimately all about 'enacting our best selves'." --Anita Diamant, author of The New Jewish Wedding and Choosing a Jewish Life
"I have read Whose Bar/Bat Mitzvah Is This, Anyway? with great pleasure-with laughter one minute, tears the next. The greatest strength of the book lies in its numerous anecdotes, each of which has an important lesson to impart. I have always said that parents can learn the most from other parents' experiences, and this book will proof of that." --Cantor Helen Leneman
About the Author
Judith Davis, Ed.D., is a licensed family therapist at the University of Massachusetts. She has written extensively on bar/bat mitzvah as a family rite of passage, and she leads workshops for parents on this topic. Dr. Davis has a two grown sons and lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her husband.