http://66.225.205.104/CM20100617.mp3
Recently we celebrated our daughter becoming a Bat Mitzvah and what sticks with me the most, besides the stellar job she did and the multitude of family and friends wishing her well, is how much has changed in the last 34 years since my Bat Mitzvah. When you consider that Judaism is more than 5,700 years old, to experience change in just 34 years is like being able to actually witness the lifecycle of a Mayfly. As a child of the 70s, the only technology that I used was a cassette tape recorder. I listened to my Rabbi chant the passages and played back my own voice as I practiced. On the other hand, our daughter's Bat Mitzvah was infused with a level of technology I could have never anticipated. We used emails, cell phones and websites to connect to the welcoming folks at Congregation Emanuel in Statesville, who opened their hearts and doors and hosted the Bat Mitzvah. We developed a Bat Mitzvah website with information about the rituals and celebrations, including links to our Facebook profiles. And we recently uploaded a video of the celebration. While all of this is striking to me, our daughter nonchalantly applied her technologically-saturated lifestyle into learning centuries-old Hebrew. She text-messaged her tutor to schedule her weekly sessions. She had mobile tutoring sessions while driving through Florida on Spring Break, using her cell phone to review the prayers with her teacher. She also had conference calls with our Rabbi to discuss the meaning of the Torah passages she would chant. We even downloaded texts of the Torah and other prayers - including MP3 files with the melodies - and e-mailed them to everyone participating in the service. In my car, I was able to practice the portion of the Torah that I would chant. I just burned a CD using my laptop. All of these technical advances were a huge relief for me. You see, I had a lot of catching up to do. This was my first time reading from the Torah. When I was a girl, only boys were called to the Torah. Back then it never even occurred to me that I should want to read from the Torah, as the whole Bat Mitzvah tradition was still relatively new. But the march for equality knows no limits. Our daughter led a service, read from the Torah and chanted a really long Haftorah, just like a boy. Despite these differences in how all of the pieces of this Bat Mitzvah came together, some things don't change. Our daughter experienced, just as I did, the deep connection to our Jewish heritage, the sheer joy of achievement, including that big sigh of relief when the chanting is done, the love of family and friends and weight of the responsibilities yet to come. Sally Phillips is a marketing executive in Charlotte. She lives in Mooresville.