Our Last Bar Mitzvah

This past weekend, our youngest son (of 6) celebrated his bar mitzvah. We are actually quite emotional about it. It is the passing of an age for Mrs. iWe and myself - as I put it, "If this is not the last Bar Mitzvah of a son, something has gone terribly wrong."

I thought I might share the meatier parts of his speech, which excludes all the expressions of appreciation. To put it in context, it is a tradition that the father uses the speech to demonstrate his own proficiency in Torah.

Here goes...

In this week’s sedra, we have the Jewish people emerging from Egypt, and it is kind of like a national birth, the people leaving the womb of Egypt, through the waters, to emerge on dry land. The people who were compared to sheratzim and other swarming creatures made on the 5^th day, lacking individuality and initiative, develop into the next stage of our lives, into the midbar, the wilderness.

This is very much like a Bar Mitzvah, of course. I am emerging from one stage of my life into the next – like the Jews leaving Egypt and going into the midbar.

In the national progression described in Bo, the people get a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night – a way to guide them.

Leaving Egypt is a stage of development, but it was just the first stage as a people, not the last. The wilderness was not the Promised Land, and it was not something we want to go back to, any more than my parents want to go back to being teenagers.

Because the whole point is to keep developing, to keep growing. The pillars of fire and cloud that we get when we leave Egypt do not stay with us – as we grow from adolescence into adulthood, we shed those training wheels. We come to understand how important it is to see the things that we cannot see with our own eyes.

And there are a lot of ways the text shows this to us. The number “6,” for example, is very common in this week’s sedra.

The number 6 is first found in creation – it is what happens when man works a full week (taking the 7^th day off). 6 represents the most any one person can make by themselves. Thus, Noach was 600 years old when the flood started – he first did all he could. Isaac was 60 years old when he fathered children. Leah’s full set of sons numbered 6. The Torah tells us that: כׇּל־הַ֠נֶּ֠פֶשׁ הַבָּאָ֨ה לְיַעֲקֹ֤ב מִצְרַ֙יְמָה֙ יֹצְאֵ֣י יְרֵכ֔וֹ מִלְּבַ֖ד נְשֵׁ֣י בְנֵי־יַעֲקֹ֑ב כׇּל־נֶ֖פֶשׁ שִׁשִּׁ֥ים וָשֵֽׁשׁ׃

All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, who came out of his loins … all the souls were sixty-six.

The people leaving Egypt are numbered at 600,000 – they had, in population, fully developed in Egypt. Even Pharaoh’s chariots are numbered at 600 – the full achievement of an industrious nation. Last week’s sedra described Pesach – six plus one day. And in this portion, Shabbos is also introduced along with the Manna: 6 + 1 day.

Six is the most a man can achieve by himself. It is the six days of work, the material achievement of all of Egypt, the maximum growth of the Jewish people in the petri dish of Egypt, before going to Sinai. And we all are commanded to do this: We are commanded to work for six days, just as we are commanded to rest on the 7^th, on Shabbos.

The seventh day is what happens when we combine what we can achieve: 6 days of work, with the addition of echod, one, G-d.

And this is reflected in the age of Bar Mitzvah, 13. We already know that 12, which is of course 6 times 2, is the fullness of man’s creation in our lifetimes:

Ishmael has 12 sons and nations – generations before Jacob achieves the same output, creating the 12 tribes of Israel. Sarah, Aharon and Moshe all have “12” in their lifespans, having achieved all that was possible for them to do, creating the foundation stones for all who followed them. Moshe lives to 120. The Mikdash has the number 12 in its construction.

So 13 is when we add Hashem to our lives.

13 is the age at which Ishmael is introduced to Hashem by being circumcised. We offer 13 bulls on the festival, Sukkot, when the people are closer to Hashem than at any other. 13 is the number of the Divine Attributes of Mercy. The word for love, Ahava, numerically is 13. Not surprisingly the word for “kiss” in the Torah, nesheq is also found precisely 13 times in the Torah!

And the word for covenant or contract, bris, is also mentioned in the Torah precisely 13 times. And this is the bris into which I am stepping now – the covenant between the Jewish people going back thousands of years, and G-d. The unification of man and G-d, the unity, is the word echod – and the numerical value of Echod is, like Ahava, also 13!

This is my day to add the critical 1 to my 12 years. It is the time when I enter into the national bris with G-d, the unity of echod with Ahava. This is when I connect with G-d directly, not through my parents, when I recognize that I am responsible for all the stupid things I will do.

This is my bar mitzvah, when I can join fully amongst Israel as a man, and grow toward a full relationship with G-d. This is like yetzias mizrayim, the Exodus, for me. I am moving into the next stage of my life. Adding G-d more fully, going from 6 to 7 and from 12 to 13.

I hope and daven that we, and all of Klal Yisroel, the Community of Israel, will be blessed to share many simchas together, to continue to develop our connection to G-d and to each other in holy ways. And that we will all meet again, soon, in Jerusalem to bring offerings!