My Pagan Bar Mitzvah

I did not want to have a bar mitzvah.

To put it mildly.

The synagogue I grew up in was probably the spiritually coldest place in my life, presided over by someone I would not have trusted to give me directions to the grocery store. I refused to perform there.

The girls in my class were not allowed to read from the Torah at their bat mitzvah ceremonies.

When I asked my parents if they actually endorsed that practice, they were like, “😡 … … Okay, what are your terms?”

I said, “I’m not having a bar mitzvah.”

Your move, parents.

They came back to me with a surprisingly strong counter-offer. Study for your bar mitzvah (with the attractive freelance bnai mitzvah tutor that served our congregation), and we’ll do it independently. In fact, we’ll leave this shul. Sayonara.

I accepted.

So began my first intensive program of spiritual study, in which I was forced to grapple with a blustery, late-in-the-game parashah full of eternally heritable theological conditions.

It was truly the opposite of 12-year-old boy vibes.

One hopeful vision got me through it:

When I was done reading it, I would have the opportunity to teach a word about it to my family.

I would be able to get up in front of all of them and say,

“So what does all that mean? I have no idea. I don’t believe any of this. I don’t believe in ✌️“God™”✌️ at all.”

I was so sure about this because, the more detail I gained about ✌️“God™”✌️ from this embittered Moses rant I was going to have to read out loud, the further I wanted to run in the opposite direction.

And hey, wouldn’t ✌️“adulthood™”✌️ make that my choice?

I couldn’t help but notice, though, that I DID feel like running. Aesthetically, I wanted to be INDIFFERENT to all of this, because it was FAKE and DUMB. But instead I had really strong feelings.

How was I going to hide caring about religious stuff from my parents?

The answer came to me in a Borders Books one day after school. Perusing the spirituality section, I found the most un-Jewish, un-✌️“God™”✌️ thing I had ever held in my hands. This book:

Now my parents were not actually RELIGIOUS people. This bar mitzvah thing was a tribal obligation to them. The optics were the important part. They probably didn’t think twice about buying me such a book in the pile of Star Wars novels with which I had surely surrounded it.

At home, I pored through it hungrily, searching for disturbing affectations to adopt like a punk rock phase for a Magic: The Gathering nerd.

But I accidentally found something else instead. I found something soft and sacred and beautiful and REAL. And I liked it.

The Judaism I had been given was entirely about things that had happened long ago in other places. This was about things happening right now, all around me. The wildflowers in the park. The moon in the window. And it wasn’t just for retelling, either. It was for INTERACTING.

Suddenly, this wasn’t for anyone else. WAY too earnest and embarrassing. I needed to keep this Wicca stuff to MYSELF. And as I began to dabble more, I realized I didn’t even feel alone, anyway. All living things were silently with me in it.

I began to do magick. Nothing for purposes too specific, just small rituals aligned with the seasons. I tied a chunk of quartz to a stick. Wand. At first, I just drew circles in the ’90s carpet in my bedroom. Then I started sneaking to the park across the street at night.

I remember the first time like it just happened. I lifted that wand and started whirling it around the circle, my intention rising naturally, like steam, unbidden, and then some critical point came, and I STOPPED and POINTED, and my whole body surged with energy.

It was real.

Before long, this was too important to expose to ANYONE who might interfere. I learned Anglo-Saxon runes just to encrypt my three-ring-binder practice journal (yes, I still have it). One time, my best friend found the book in my nightstand (asshole), and I made him swear an oath.

I kept preparing, working toward that bar mitzvah moment when I would declare publicly, “I don’t believe in God.” And I kept doing magick and deepening my soul in secret.

When my moment came, looking out on my whole family, to say “I don’t believe in God,” my voice broke.

Things got a lot more complicated after that.