The Thirteenth Rail

Brian: Joanne, you got us into this, but it seems to me like if anybody had bad luck it was the United States of America. I mean, what Rhode Island was saying was, we shouldn’t have slavery, we should have a bill of rights. What’s wrong with that?

Joanne Freeman: Well, it’s not so much that something’s wrong with not wanting slavery and wanting a bill of rights. I think it’s just the, at least in the time period, it has more to do with the way that they went about saying that.
You’re right, that to some degree you could say, well Rhode Island did the “American thing” by saying, “We protest. We don’t wanna do this. We’re holding back.” But the other states also wanted a bill of rights. They just basically agreed to ratify the Constitution with the promise that a bill of rights would be attached later. So some of this has to do with process.

Brian: So I’m developing a theory here about superstition and 13. It seems to me like a lot of the people who get tagged with this 13 thing, they’re kind of iconoclasts. They’re kind of pushing against the grain. Certainly that 13 Club in New York, they were laughing at the notions of superstition, and Rhode Island gets tagged as “Rogue Island, the 13th state”, because they wanna do the right thing, basically.

Nathan Connolly: Yeah, but in both of those cases I mean, look. So the 13 white male voters in Rhode Island who wanna hold out, right? They can do that, and they can do it on very high-minded principles. Or the folks in these elite clubs in New York City can laugh at those folks, who frankly aren’t on hard times and having bad luck.
So that there’s a lot you can do from a vantage point-

Brian: Who aren’t earning $13 a month.

Nathan Connolly: 13 cents a month, exactly right.

Joanne Freeman: And also, to back us from the number 13 for a second, the fact of the matter is Rhode Island and Connecticut were both kind of, slightly wacko states because they were formed as colonies by dissenters who left Massachusetts. So they started out as colonies full of people who had attitude, basically.

Nathan Connolly: Contrarians, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian: Exactly.

Nathan Connolly: It’s certainly true that democracy was troublesome in this case too. Rhode Island is going to continue to be a place that asks for sovereignty, that expects a kind of participation in democracy. That wouldn’t be the case in a place like Georgia or Virginia, or they have to come up with all manner of really creative counting schemes relative to slaves. So the fact you don’t have slaves means you can argue for a democracy in a way that other states might find threatening.
So in that sense too, I think the allure of democracy for Rhode Island is far less of a danger than other states might consider.

Joanne Freeman: You know, it’s also worth saying that dissent is less effective when you’re little in number or you’re small. And Rhode Island is a little tiny state. Now that said, I think it’s worth saying is, well, that dissent is an American tradition and it doesn’t matter if you’re big or small, dissent was pretty much gonna go on in this period and forever after.

Brian: I vehemently disagree Joanne.
Every religious Jewish boy knows what the number 13 means. It’s when they become a man. Historian Meaghan Dwyer-Ryan says bar mitzvah literally means “son of the commandment” in Hebrew.

Meaghan D.: For boys, once they reach that age of maturity, it was time for them to become an adult and to become a fully participating member of the faith.

Brian: The main event at a bar mitzvah or a bat mitzvah, the ceremony for 13 year old girls, is a reading from the Torah, which by the way is sung, not read. Oh, and did I mention, it’s gotta be done in Hebrew?

Nathan Connolly: Now, I know you Brian. You’ve got a line or two rattling around upstairs still. Give us a taste.

Brian: I know you Nathan. You always hit my sore spots and this is one of them. This is something I brought up with our guest.

Joanne Freeman: Okay, this I gotta hear.

Brian: I went to Hebrew school three times a week for at least three years, maybe four. And the only word of Hebrew I know is shalom. Do kids actually learn Hebrew now, when they go to Hebrew school?

Meaghan D.: You know, that’s a great question. I think some do, but I think most are just, they learn the bare minimum, just to get through the bar mitzvah ceremony and then they kinda forget it.

Brian: So what’s up with that? I mean, right? How can we be sending generations of kids to thousands of hours of Hebrew school and the only word that all of us know is shalom?

Joanne Freeman: Dwyer-Ryan worked as an archivist for nearly a decade at a historic Boston synagogue called Temple Israel. It’s the largest Reform congregation in New England. It was founded in 1854 by German-speaking Jews.

Brian: And listening to Dwyer-Ryan describe religious education for Jewish kids in the mid-19th century, I realized that I actually got off pretty easy.

Meaghan D.: Boys would have bar mitzvah training in the home of the [foreign language 00:23:06] at the time, or the reader. And both boys and girls attended religious school classes at the synagogue itself, about three days a week. They learned everything, from Hebrew and scripture, Jewish history, and various other kinds of topics and they learned those topics both in German and in English.

Brian: The congregants at Temple Israel worried that their American born kids would resent and even reject these old-world traditions. They were even more afraid that kids would reject Judaism altogether.
So, like other Reform synagogues in the US, they decided to Americanize some of their religious practices. They had sermons in English. They installed an organ. Gasp. Created a choir, and let men and women sit side by side rather than in separate sections.
In 1874, Temple Israel hired a rabbi named Solomon Schindler who made even more changes.

Meaghan D.: And one of those measures was the discontinuation of bar mitzvah for boys and instead-

Brian: Hold on. I thought that bar mitzvah was such a big deal. How could he … Isn’t that touching the 13th rail?

Meaghan D.: It is for many Jews at the time. It was a very controversial issue and in fact the board of trustees was not too happy with Schindler when he made this executive decision to discontinue bar mitzvah. But they went along with it. They voiced their objections and then just said, “Okay, well, go on. Continue.” So it’s not that-

Brian: So wait, wait. Meaghan, Meaghan.

Meaghan D.: Yes.

Brian: Who was the first kid that got denied a bar mitzvah?

Meaghan D.: I’m not sure, really. What they did instead was they adopted a confirmation service.

Brian: I see.

Meaghan D.: And this was a practice that was open to both boys and girls. And it was in line with other Reform measures at the time. Many Jews decided that the way to Americanize was to adopt some, I guess you could call them Protestant kind of practices, and confirmation was one of those practices.

Brian: And I just have to ask a little bit about this confirmation because I was bar mitzvahed and I had to do the Haftorah and it was really hard to learn how to chant that passage from the Torah in Hebrew with all of those very seriously observing Jewish people around me.
Was there anything like that in the confirmation? I just wanna make sure that these kids weren’t getting off easy.

Meaghan D.: Yeah, to disappoint you, yes they were getting off easy.

Brian: Ah, you see?

Meaghan D.: Particularly in the late 19th and early 20th century. One of the reasons why the congregation adopted confirmation was that they realized fewer students, fewer children were learning Hebrew. It wasn’t considered as important, particularly for Reform Jews. In fact, in the classical Reform period which had its height, again, late 19th, early 20th century, many other branches of Judaism considered Reform Jews to be Jews in name only.
And Temple Israel kinda of adopted some of those practices that were questionable to say the least, such as having services on Sundays as opposed to Saturdays.

Brian: Yes, that’s sounds somewhat questionable. So when did they get back to doing bar mitzvahs and why did that come about?

Meaghan D.: In many ways, they were among the wealthiest Jews in the city, the most Americanized Jews. They were the leaders in many ways. They were the German-Jewish synagogue. But into the ’20s, ’30s, and into the ’40s the membership was changing slightly. You had Jews of Eastern European descent and more traditional backgrounds joining the synagogue.
And in fact, one of the things that made Temple Israel change back, sort of the pendulum swinging back the other way, was the hiring of Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman. And so he brought back a lot of traditions that were considered more conservative in nature. Things like having a Friday evening Shabbat service. He got rid of the Sunday service. Having candles at services and bringing back the bar mitzvah.
In 1941 bar mitzvah was again celebrated at Temple Israel. And he also, the previous year, made it mandatory for all students to learn Hebrew again, so those practices were back. And again, it was in keeping with trends in Reform Judaism. What was interesting too was they continued to perform the confirmation service. They saw it as bar mitzvah would happen at age 13, kids would keep going to school, it was a way to keep them going, to learn more about their faith, and then at age 16 they would have their confirmation service.

Brian: Now, this is a period, if I understand correctly, that girls started having bat mitzvahs in greater numbers. How does that square with the Rabbi’s emphasis on tradition? Or was it not the case at Temple Israel?

Meaghan D.: Temple Israel is actually fairly late in adopting the bat mitzvah ceremony. The first bat mitzvah didn’t happen until 1956 and there were three that year, whereas the first bat mitzvah in the United States occurred in 1922. So for Temple Israel-

Brian: So quite a lag time.

Meaghan D.: … And by that point, it was just seen as time. It wasn’t necessarily that it was controversial by that point. Girls just, they started doing it and there really wasn’t that much controversy by that point.

Brian: I’m guessing the 13 year olds and adults have a very different definition of what it means to be 13.

Meaghan D.: Very much so. Yeah, for kids I think they go throughout their religious education preparing for and thinking about the bar/bat mitzvah and thinking, “Oh great. Now I’m done.” But for the rabbis, for the religious educators, they’re thinking, “Nope, nope. This is just the beginning.”

Brian: So bar mitzvah, at least today, is less about becoming an adult and more about marking a very important transition.

Meaghan D.: Yes, I’d say so. Yeah, it’s certainly, I don’t think anybody would call a 13 year old an adult.

Brian: They would.

Meaghan D.: They would, yes they would. But yeah, and I think these are kids and for them I think it’s an important milestone, but it also means a really great party.

Brian: Meaghan, I have to tell you that when I was bar mitzvahed, for a boy, the pen and pencil set was very much the thing. What is the quintessential bar or bat mitzvah gift these days?

Meaghan D.: I’d have to say money, at this point.

Brian: Always in style. I’m sure they rush out and buy a pen and pencil set.

Meaghan D.: Oh, of course, yes. Or maybe a computer or an iPad.

Nathan Connolly: Megan Dwyer-Ryan is co-author with Susan Porter and Lisa Fagin Davis of “Becoming American Jews: Temple Israel of Boston”.