EDIT: SHE PASSED!!!!!
If you could pray for her it would mean a lot. Honestly I think I’m more nervous than her. It’s been such a long and meaningful journey and I’m so proud of all the work she’s put it.
Laïcité my ass. This was taken on the 4th floor women’s bathroom. An ad soliciting for the Catholic Church. The predatory nature of any religion proselytizing in a hospital with the sick and desperate alone in nauseating but how can this be allowed at a publicly funded institution is beyond me. Imagine if ANY other religion had tried this.
Shabbat Shalom!
In Numbers 13:33, the ten spies report back to Moses and the Israelites that the Anakites must supposedly regard them as grasshoppers because they regard themselves to be so. The grasshopper, a group of over 11,000 species in the sub-order Caelifera, are hemimetabalous insects. That is to say, they moult five times over the course of their lives, but never go through a full metamorphosis. Sound familiar?
I have been technically bat mitzvah since I was thirteen. I have had the honour of being called up to bless the Torah on this very bimah many times by now. So why then have I chosen to take on this arduous task?
Caleb and Joshua saw the same Anakites as the other ten spies after having trekked the same forty days. They carried back the same gargantuan grapes. And yet, they made a different choice. In a Midrash from Bamidbar Rabbah, the rabbis discuss how the report given says more about the spies self-perception than any actual military reality. Why should they believe that an enemy would see them in the same light as G-d saw them? Why should we see ourselves the same at thirty-six as we did at thirteen?
Eighth grade was really hard, but surely this is harder. I had homework, and sadly bullies but I had no taxes as they say. An extra burden, yes. But an active choice.
The rabbi gave me two main notes on the first draft of this speech:
For anyone who knows me, this would not come as a surprise. It is often the first thing people notice about me. I’m working on it. So, in honour of my chosen date of bat mitzvah, let me take an honest account. What should I, on this day, look like to myself? A funny, smart, overly self-depricating woman, on the very cusp on middle-age. Same curls, same height. But so much more love. Today, I am bat mitzvah, proud to finally take on all that that means.