Today I am a Woman

My 63 year old mother had a Bat Mitzvah today. You read that right. A woman--my mother--had a Bat Mitzvah 50 years after she was supposed to really celebrate the occasion.

Everybody knows that I am Catholic. Well, I think everybody who knows me knows this fact. Most of my life, whenever the question of faith came up, my typical response was that I was Jewish. This changed in 1990.

I converted to Catholicism when I was a junior in college. I was raised most of my life without religion for the most part. My father insisted that the family didn't need to pay to pray, so we never stepped foot in a synagogue. My father was half Jewish, Half Catholic, like me. He was baptized, like me. But for some reason, he claimed Judaism when he married my mother.

I am sure it had a lot to do with the fact that my mother was raised Kosher, and that my grandparents were very strict. But, my father refused to pay a synagogue to be a member. So we never went.

Therefore, when my mother's father--my Zadie--died, religion basically took a major second to anything else in our lives. We never went to Hebrew School, we never went to services. I was basically raised without a religion.

When I was 20, faith entered my life. A couple of years prior, I began taking classes as part of my Theology core curriculum at Loyola. During my New Testament class, I concluded that I believed in what I was being taught. I started taking RCIA classes at the church (Roman Catholic Initiation for Adults).

At the Easter Vigil in 1990, I was baptized, took my first communion, and had my first communion all in one night. No one ever criticised me. No one ever rolled their eyes at me. In fact, most people were encouraging.

I was engaged in rituals that were typically held for babies, eight year-old children, and teens. No one had much to say expect for praising me and accepting me into the new faith.

What's sad is that most people, when they heard my mother was having a Bat Mitzvah, did just the opposite. Including me. They rolled their eyes. They passed judgement on my mother, claiming her plight was a waste of time; the activity of a woman who didn't really get religion and who wanted to be part of the spotlight.

But in reality, after sitting three hours through a ceremony I could not follow, I understood where my mother was coming from. She was like the many Catholics who missed their confirmation. She was like the boys and girls--typically aged 13--who chose not to get confirmed.

She was an adult who wanted to connect with her given faith. She was an adult who was judged by many. But when you think about it, she is very much like the kids who have a Bat/Bar Mitzvah at 13.

She not only became a woman, but she had the knowledge, the wisdom, to understand what a huge commitment she was making.

Who cares what other people think. She made a decision that was right for her. This is a lesson I learned from my mother; today, when I was a 39 year old father of two, and she was a 13 year-old girl, ready to face the world.