A Bar Mitzvah Speech
Which came first the chicken or the egg? Another way of asking the question is which comes first the Bar Mitzvah or the party and celebration. Do we celebrate because of the boy becoming a Bar Mitzvah? Or did he become a Bar Mitzvah because we all wanted to celebrate?
This is not such a difficult question to answer. In the Torah portion we just read, the answer was given.
The Torah describes the Jewish people in the desert and how they matured.
First, Moses tells the Jews, “You should know in your heart that just as a person disciplines his son, so too G-d your G-d, will discipline you.”
In this verse Moses is comparing the Jews’ in the desert to the pre-Bar Mitzvah child whose parents are responsible for his behavior.
The Torah then continues: “You should keep the commandments of G-d, your G-d…” Now Moses is stressing that now “You should keep the commandments,” on your own. You no longer ought to depend on your parents holding you by your hand to make the right moral choices in your life.
This is precisely what a Bar Mitzvah is all about. It is when a boy becomes independently responsible to keep all the commandments.
The Torah then follows this with the promise of great rewards and great food that will follow: In other words, after the Bar Mitzvah, we celebrate and party.
But it doesn’t end with the party.
The Torah continues that when you finish partaking of G-d’s beautiful and bountiful world—when the party is over—we must express gratitude to G-d. The Torah states in the very last verse that I just read: “And you shall eat, you shall be satisfied and you shall bless G-d your G-d.”
This commandment establishes the need for us to show gratitude to others for all the blessings we receive.
Immediately after the conclusion of today’s reading the Torah speaks about the need to guard ourselves from the negative influences.
This reminds us of the Rebbe’s message from sports. One of the positions in many different ball games is the role of keeping the ball from the “other” team and thereby preventing them from scoring.
There is a moral and spiritual lesson in this game that a Bar Mitzvah boy must learn from this aspect of sports.
The world is round like a ball. The ball, or globe, is given to each one of us, as the Talmud tells us that each person should say, “The world was created for my sake.” The purpose of life is to bring the globe into G- d’s net.
However, in G-d’s plan there is an opposing team that challenges us at every opportunity. In the same way that the Jew wants to put the “ball” in G-d’s court, so too the negative forces have their own plans to put it in the opposite side.
However, it is specifically the threat posed by this opponent that charges the Jew with the motivation to win. The desire for victory pushes us to reach much deeper within ourselves and discover our hidden potential.
As in sport, in life one cannot move sluggishly. We must keep moving with vitality. This is achieved not just with our brain and heart but with the action of our feet. Only by means of putting our Jewish learning into vigorous practice can we hope to emerge victorious in our quest to put the “ball” or the world in G-d’s domain.
A Bar Mitzvah is the day from which a boy draws inspiration to serve as G-d’s defense team to do his share in keeping the “ball” i.e., the world —which includes the miniature world—from falling into the hands of the wrong side.
Ultimately this will lead us to the victory we have been praying for, for thousands of years: to bring Moshiach who will usher in the Messianic Age when we will have universal peace and goodness. From this point onward, every Mitzvah the Bar Mitzvah boy will now do has that much more power to make that happen sooner.
From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Ekev by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.
