What Adam Sandler knows about being Jewish |
In a loud argument near the climax of Netflix’s You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, thirteen-year-old Stacy tells her father she doesn’t want to be Jewish anymore. His answer stops her cold: “God wants you out right now. How’s that?”
It’s a throwaway joke in a teen comedy. It’s also a precise diagnosis of how American Jews understand what being Jewish means.
The father’s perspective is radical: belonging to the Jewish people is not a birthright; rather, it’s a choice you renew constantly, every time you participate in anything recognizably Jewish. Opt out, and the community — and God — will take you at your word. The bat mitzvah party you’ve been dreaming about for years? Gone too. But make the effort, and you’re part of a profound story.
That argument, played for laughs between Adam Sandler and his daughter, contains deeper theology than the average sermon, and it points to something important about Jewishness that the bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies reveal. This Shavuot – a holiday traditionally marking the Jewish people’s acceptance of the Torah – is an opportunity to think about the freedom American and Israeli Jews have in choosing to be Jews, which is on display in their bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies.
Every introductory anthropology course teaches that rites of initiation — the dramatic, on-time enactment of a routine activity in adult life — tell you what a community truly cares........