Today in class Professor Staub asked the final question, “is tradition a useful concept?” For me this is a very personal question. As I’ve moved toward a more traditional practice of Judaism, I’ve been dealing with this question constantly. Obviously the first thing that comes to mind is Tevye on the rooftop belting “tradition!” but this is not where it ends. It is actually interesting to think about the idea of tradition in the context of the myths that we were talking about it class this week. The idea of tradition has actually evolved over the years. What is “traditional” tends to be associated with what is old. In the times of Fiddler on the Roof tradition was associated with the shtetl, with bottle dancing and yiddish. Nowadays these are not really considered the “traditional” things as much. Old traditions have evolved into new ones.
The bar mitzvah is a great example of something for which the tradition has completely morphed over the years. In olden days young boys would read from the Torah maybe have a nice luncheon with family but it wasn’t such a large-scale event. Today, even fairly Orthodox families have large parties and events at this auspicious time in their children’s lives. And the bat mitzvah has become more and more common. This is all an example of the evolution of tradition.
But what does all this have to do with tradition being a useful concept? The fact is that it is something that we need in our lives. The idea of being connected to past generations came up a lot in our fieldwork as a big part of people’s Jewish identity. The concept of tradition, even if it evolves is a way to stay connected to these previous generations.

Discussing the idea of children’s religious responsibility in class today called up a lot of thoughts that I had this summer. I was working at a Jewish summer amp and was responsible for the youngest kids at camp: kids ranging from 6 months to 8 years during the day and from dinner until breakfast 10 year olds, the youngest campers in bunks.
In a place where the majority of people were under the age of bar mitzvah, what they were obliged to do and what they were allowed to do came into question a lot. When discussing the Yemenite tradition of children reading Torah today, it reminded me of this summer. The Yemenite tradition is to call up the children for the 6th aliyah and they all read a bit. This is a pretty cool tradition I think and is really important to teach the kids about the importance of reading Torah in the shul. At camp, we let the kids read Torah as well. They were by no means obligated to, but they were given the option and were usually rewarded with something sweet at the end of the session. They were each given between 3 and 8 verses to read, and by the end of the summer we had so many kids wanting to read that we had to split up each of the aliyot even further than usual (we read on a triennial cycle to make it a more manageable service for the kids). At first this practice seemed very strange to me. I had never heard of anyone under the age of bar mitzvah reading from the Torah (unless it happened because their ceremony occurred before their actual 13th birthday).
After today’s class I recalled the questions I’d had about allowing children to read from the Torah over the summer. I searched “children reading Torah” into Google and found a responsa from Rabbi Joel Roth, which in effect stated that it is allowable for minor’s to read Torah  http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/teshuv…
20012004/010.pdf). This opinion was adopted as the Rabbincal Assembly (the international association of Conservative Rabbis) in 1982. It is clear that the blessings may not be said by a minor, which at certain times made it impossible for them to read from the Torah as the blessings were said by the readers, but this is no longer the case in most situations.
This then raised the question in my mind, if there’s no reason not to, why is Torah reading among most Ashkenazi circles (outside of camp) reserved for people post bar mitzvah? In our day and age, the bar mitzvah ceremony itself has become such a culminating rite of passage that at least in many circles educations is actually put off until right before this time. I myself only read the Torah at my bat mitzvah (I did not lead any other part of the service, and the speech that I gave centered around the Torah portion). I had learned the main stories of the Bible, of course, before this time, but until 6 months before the actual ceremony there was no training about how to lead a service for read from the Torah. It was seen as something you needed to do in order for this rite to be complete but was not put in the light of a lifelong skill.
In the responsa I read, there was also a discussion of 10 or 11 year olds wanting to read the Torah in shul and a worry that this could lead to the idea of an early bar mitzvah and a disappearance by this child from the synagogue after his initial reading. I however agree with Rabbi Joel Roth who claims that “the opposite result seems more likely…. allowing children under the age of Bar Mitzvah to participate in such a central and meaningful way would only encourage the idea of participation outside the realm of the Bar Mitzvah ceremony.” And in seeing the excitement in the faces of my 10 year olds this summer after reading from the Torah, I know that this is true. In general I believe that children should not be relegated away to family services or told to just sit and watch, but rather that they should be able to participate as fully as they can before the age of Bar Mitzvah.