Bar Mitzvah on Sunday

There have been a number of inquiries whether the Bar Mitzvah cannot be held on Sunday; also, whether it cannot be held on Saturday afternoon.

The frequency of inquiries as to Sunday Bar Mitzvah is manifestly due to the unfortunate fact that the social celebration that accompanies the Bar Mitzvah has become so elaborate in nature and so many guests are invited, that parents are eager to have it on Sunday, the day on which more people can attend. This elaboration of festivities is nothing new with us. It is an old social ailment which responsible leaders of the past have endeavored to curb. Solomon Luria (Maharshal), the great authority in six-teenth-century Poland, makes an anguished reference to similar unbridled festivities. In “Yam Shel Shelomo” (to Baba Kamma, chap. 7, par. 37), he discusses the various festivities which people hold, considering them religious feasts (Seudas Mitzvah). But he says that many of them are “just for the purpose of stuffing the gullet and occasions for wild levity.”

It is surely our obligation to do as much as possible to keep the Bar Mitzvah primarily a religious festival and not to make it easier to convert it entirely into a festivity. Clearly, the important part of the Bar Mitzvah is the call ing up of the boy to participate in the Torah reading. Solomon Luria, who expresses his general dubiety about the entire ceremony, because most boys are often not physically mature at that age, nevertheless admits that calling up to the Torah is unobjectionable because, according to the Talmud, even a minor may be called to the Torah.

Mordecai Jaffe (Levush Techales 282, note) says that the calling to the Torah is obligatory. So, too, Abraham Abele Gombiner (Mogen Abraham to Orah Hayyim 225, n. 4) speaks of the traditional father’s blessing (Boruch S’Ptorani) which must be recited when the boy reads the service or the Torah on the Sabbath.

So it is clear that the Bar Mitzvah must take place on the Sabbath in connection with the Torah reading. As for the party, it is closer to tradition if the social festivities take place on the same day. Gombiner says (in the same note) that it is a mitzvah to make a party (Seuda) on the day when one’s son is Bar Mitzvah.

However, it would be no great violation of tradition if the party were held on Sunday. In fact, Solomon Luria believes that the party can be a truly religious occasion if the son gives a learned address, that study and preaching of the Torah would make the festivities virtually religious (a Seudas Mitzvah), and he says that on whatever day it is held it can be a mitzvah if that is its true character. However, it is much easier to keep the Bar Mitzvah service religious than to make a modern party spiritual. It would be wise, then, to make clear distinction between the ritual and the party. Let the ritual remain on the Sabbath where it belongs, and let the party be on Sunday, when the people seem to prefer it.

If, however, there is great pressure on the part of the people, the rabbi can at least hold firmly to the fact that the service can take place only when there is a Torah reading. With that understanding we can have some means of shifting the ceremony without hurting its religious character. We can have the ceremony on any day when the Torah is regularly read. If there is a Sunday during the half-holidays (Chol Ha-moed) or a Sunday coincident with the New Moon, since the Torah is read on those days, the Bar Mitzvah may also be held on them.

So we may have a Bar Mitzvah on Sabbath afternoon; at least there is no objection to it stated in the literature. Also, in Reform congregations, where we have developed the custom of Torah reading on Friday night, we may have Bar Mitzvahs then.

But to conduct a Torah reading where no Torah reading belongs, to recite the blessings of the Torah when none are due (Berocho L’vatolo), merely in order to make the religious service convenient to the social celebration, is to consent to an inversion of values, and should not be done.