http://humanifesto.org/yehoshanah/2004/turning_thirteen.htm

Title: turning thirteen

In Jewish religious practice,
young children, from their weaning,
are taught life guiding rituals, every day.

This form of education is literally, a way of life.

The Jewish biblical doctrine of ritual law and belief
together with its telling of cultural journey has become
an elaborate way of life including commandments and custom.

After having become accustomed to a coherent way of Life,
Jewish youth first become obligated in ritual observance
from the age of their sexual puberty (12 and 13 years).

Having already begun participation in religious observance,
children remain within the responsibility of their parents,
in religious terms, until their leaving home (at 20 years).

Regretfully this age is related to the age for going to war.

Bar Mitzvah is a religious term, which literally,
is understood to mean, one born of a commandment.

Idiomatically, Bar Mitzvah is understood to mean
one that is obligated in all of the commandments and customs.

Bar Mitzvah is also understood to mean,
one that goes out of the obligation inferred by a commandment.

In order to reconcile these interpretations to Bar Mitzvah,
let's explore the subject of religious first principle.

How might all the commandments form one initial obligation?

Perhaps Bar Mitzvah derives from the Biblical commandment,
given to Adam and Eve as a blessing to have children,
and to have children that can also have children.

At Bar Mitzvah the parents realize their obligation
to have children, when their child finally arrives to puberty.

Meanwhile reaching puberty is an experience of initiation.

Grand parents exit completely from their parental obligation
when their children also become parents themselves.

A new parent, as an initiate, may take spouse and child
out of the grand parents larger extended family household.

Understanding the Biblical blessing to procreate in this way,
Bar Mitzvah is all about that larger process of initiation.

Looking again at an inclusive principle of initiation,
Perhaps the initiates primary command is to focus on belief.

With a belief in a G-d that encompasses every aspect of life.
to believe G-d creates all natural reality so it can function.

to believe G-d blesses all people to inhabit the entire world.
to believe G-d has made and makes a covenant with all people.

to believe G-d is a saviour, giving freedom to the oppressed.
to believe G-d brings personal and universal peace and harmony.

For an initiate, belief is the best candidate for a role model.

Perhaps, for the initiate, the first commandment is to honour.

To honour our parents, our care takers, our teaches and judges.
Included in this honour is an acceptance of a whole way of life.

To the exception of any practice that disregards a higher law.
The initiate is safest to follow a way of honour, initially.

Perhaps for the initiate the first commandment is to love.
To love G-d,
to love ones self and spouse,
to love ones sibling and fellow kind
to love the orphan, widow and stranger.

With love of another, there are priorities.
I have heard that love for ones spouse is first.

Understanding that G-d does not stand in line for love
because love is actually an expression of G-d in people.

To love G-d, what other method is there,
but only to imitate the divine provider in our lives.

This is the highest worship of the spirit within,
to receive all ones gifts only in order to also give.

If spiritual gifts are mental, emotional, vital and material,
we might be forgiven if we confuse our love with our learning.

Before the Common Era, Hillel the Elder taught,
Start to learn all the teachings from where the bible says,

Do not take revenge or bear a grudge,
rather love your fellow as your self,
I am G-d.  (Lev. 19:18)

In every textual statement also saying, I am G-d,
we are asked to believe the one speaking is YHWH.

Traditionally in Judaism, Jewish scholars teach YHWH means
one that always was, is and will be, one eternally present.

I translate the name YHWH with variable evolving permutations:

Intention to be attentive to this present attention.

Coming to understand, attention varies with circumstance.
Coming to understand, to be attentive varies with vitality.
Coming to understand, intention varies with values and belief.

Adolescence is becoming an initiate in society,
it starts like an engine when turning thirteen,
it starts with an amazing arousing motivation,
it starts to become a longer process,
it starts to become a deeper process,
it starts to be about leaving home
and learning to make ones own way.

Igniting the human engines of self discovery,
I discover a new, the raw fuels and materials
engaging my vehicle, driving my motivations.

All of a sudden I care to learn more about society.
I want to get around in ways I never did before.

I need to know how to change my reality gears,
and learn to the wonders of parking myself.

As an initiate of a new realm in responsibility
I ask myself questions I never imagined earlier.

Who, in G-ds name, is driving this vehicle?

Until I can honestly distinguish my own self
how can I love with my own love?
and not just mimic a love shown to me?

How can I love another as my self?
and not pretend a love I rarely even show myself?

To the degree I honestly know my own self,
distinguishing my ways from my habits & my education
can I begin to share myself or recognize another person.

Only in discovering my authenticity and spontaneity
can consideration teach me to improvise & compromise.

Otherwise whose wishes are they that I am compromising?

until I move out of my habits and become my own person,
until I learn to discover my own independent choice,
How can I honestly compromise my wishes with others?

Only after uncovering my own underlying beliefs and values,
can I learn to understand others and learn to agree.

Only in the wake of these, my underlying inner experiences,
do I begin to know them as contenders forming my reality.

When I give them my wider attention, I notice a depth in me.

Then I learn to know a wider and deeper experiential reality.
Then I learn to come and go from these various experiences.

I then learn to know my inner knowing coming outward earlier.
I learn to witness my outer ways influencing my inner ways.

I learn to practice and participate in my self discovery.

These motivations drive me away from my old ways in stability.
How might my desires find a parter to share in common quest?

I learn to love and know another not from my childhood.
I currently choose to be in relationship with someone new.

I discover myself in another way and recognize my own way.

And as my new choices in relationship
bring the possibility of a child into our lives
I discover again, a new way of knowing myself,
and in that context, knowing you I love another.

I discover parenthood with my children and spouse.
As my child learns to know her self and her world,
wonderfully we become new in her to discover again.

As a parent, I find my self again in a new relationship,
to the childish ways, the gifts of curiosity and trust.

Just as we discover children learning to know and love,
so too do we learn to gain a greater depth of ourselves.

In this context, bringing curious children into life,
I find a desire to stabilize my own curiosity for a change.

I find a desire to build a house around my inner life again.
I become the ritual maker, a house childhood can grow up in.

Eventually, our children will learn to grow in their own way.
Children learn to grow out of our house and out of our care.

I'll discover the curiosity of grandchildren and their parents
in another perspective of my own inner, family and social life.

This is a little story of confusing religious first principles.
How can we relate childhood, belief, honour, love and learning?

Is an experiment in scientific social engineering very different?

The larger picture of an evolving society, religious or not,
is a story of cultural journey which involves a few chapters.

I believe the young tender shoots in
the historical branching of religious cultures,
and the diversification of sub-culture within city society
grow simultaneously to the great trunks and older tree canopies.

Turning thirteen is all about grass roots cultural maturation.
Social reality is not just analogous to children growing up.

Stories of children in relation to their parents house,
and parents growing up in relation to children
and parents becoming mature social elders
and organizations developing protocols
and a wider society evolving in its way
form threads and a greater tapestry.

Every living story weaves
to form a larger coherent story
of social and cultural journey.

A story of cultural journey makes real sense
at every experiential level for every reason.

A story that remains so complex and harmonious
that it reflects a living diversity and change
at once the speaker and at once the story it tells.

I compare my Western experience to my Jewish experience.
I also consider the cultural journey of both these cultures.

I find myself a participant in both of these stories.

I seek for myself and my society a cultural reconciliation.
I believe that both my strongest influences are evolving.

I believe that Western culture as a whole might not survive.

Western culture has itself branched away from its influences.
Within the house of Western culture grows distinct cultures.

I find myself a participant of these various cultures.

A prayer always begins in the sincerity of the heart.
All prayers must start in the reality of human experience.

Jews pray daily for the fruition of a very worldly culture.

A culture that will become best known among all nations
as the reclamation of the instruments and crafts of war.

Jewish daily ritual and learning prayerfully participates
in a larger cultural journey towards a worldly peace,
based on the opening of knowledge and kindly cooperation.

Not for a deadly peace based in a suffocating deterrence,
nor for any false peace by force of the greater terror.

Not for a cold war of a developed organization of secrecy
nor a dominant culture that rules by an open show of power.

Daily, I choose to be an initiate in all of these cultures.

I recognize a strong motivation to compose cultural synthesis.
The cultural synthesis I choose for myself is not domination.

I begin to accept this harmonizing culture in my inner life.
I begin to recognize it when ever I see it outside of me.

yehoshanah
14 - 18/2/2004


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