Cantor Matt Axelrod - Surviving Your Bar/Bat Mitzvah: The Ultimate Insiders Guide

Cantor Matt Axelrod has more than twenty years of experience teaching, coaching, prodding, and preparing students for the biggest day of their teenage years. A native of the Boston area, he is a graduate of Brandeis University and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and currently serves as cantor at Congregation Beth Israel in Scotch Plains, New Jersey. He is a past member of the Executive Council of the Cantors Assembly and a former president of its New Jersey Region, and has served on the United Synagogue Council on Jewish Education. Cantor Axelrod is also an avid aviation enthusiast as well as a licensed pilot and flight instructor who will occasionally promise kids an airplane ride as a bar mitzvah present.

For more tips on surviving your bar or bat mitzvah as well as your chance to join the discussion, please visit Cantor Axelrods website at www.mattaxelrod.com.

H EY, IVE got a great idea for a book!

Little did I know how much effort it would involve to transform that thought into the finished product youre holding in your hands. I want to express my gratitude to the many people without whom it would not have been possible. First Id like to thank my agent, Anne Devlin, for her advice and persistence. This project would never have proceeded without her. Thank you to my editor, Julie Kirsch, and her assistant, Lindsey Porambo. Julies expertise and enormous patience with a novice author were remarkable, and I cant imagine how she was able to restrain herself from finally breaking into my home and ripping out the comma key from my computer keyboard. Many thanks to David Barash for his funny cartoons that appear throughout this book.

An enormous thank you goes out to my friends at Congregation Beth Israel of Scotch Plains, New Jersey. I cant believe how fortunate I am to have been able to call this synagogue my home for more than twenty years, and I appreciate the warmth, humor, and support I get every time I walk into the building. And finally, of course, none of this would have been possible without the love and patience of my wife Tali and my sons Judah and Josh. They have enjoyed taking this adventure with me every step of the way and werent shy about letting me know when a joke I wrote wasnt as funny as I thought. Thanks for always being there.

Y EAH, I know you. This is what you really wanted to find out. Not all that stuffabout responsibility and trope and the Jewish calendar. Well, thats why I put this material in the back of the book tucked away in the Appendix. If I had made this the first chapter, would you have kept reading?

Here, then, are some tried and true hints, tricks, and strategies to make your few hours in front of everyone go as smoothly as possible. In many cases, theyre as simple and straightforward as can be, but if you keep them in mind, youll have a much easier time.

There are lots of times during the service when the congregation is supposed to sing along. This can take one of two forms. Either everyone is singing a congregational melody together or else youre leading a responsive prayer, in which you chant one part, the congregation sings the next, and you go back and forth. One example of that is the Ashrei , which is often sung line by line, with you and the congregation taking turns.

Its tempting to just take a break when everyone else is singing. But you should sing along with the congregation, even if its quietly or under your breath. If you dont, its easy to get distracted and lose your place in the prayer book. Then all of a sudden its your turn to sing and you have no idea where you are, and you either freeze or come in at the wrong place. If youre singing along with everyone, even if its just in your head, you will never lose your place.

This is something that I learned while I was studying for my pilots license. As the aviators saying goes, The two most useless things in the world are the runway behind you and the fuel you left back in the pumps. In other words, there comes a point when worrying about something in the past (Gee, now that Im trying to take off, I sure wish I had a longer runway. Oops!) is just fruitless. So dont bother.

In fact, it becomes downright distracting. When youre on page 132, it doesnt do you any good to figure out whether you botched page 90 or sang it correctly. It will, however, take your attention away from what youre doing now.

If its in the past, just forget about it. If you got it right, great. If you did make a mistake, its not a big deal.

Make sure that youre never surprised when you turn the page.

I once noticed a bat mitzvah girl do an amazing thing. As she was singing or reading a page in the Siddur, she would occasionally sneak a peek at the next page. She wanted to know what was coming up. I thought that was brilliant! I never told her to do that; she simply figured out that it was helpful to know what was coming up.

Your brain can only work so fast, especially when youre already dealing with the mental stress of having to remember so much material. I will often watch a bar mitzvah kid get a momentary deer-in-the-headlights look when they turn the page and have to figure out what prayer theyre looking at, how to sing it, and where to come in. Just by taking a quick look at the next page you can prevent that from happening.

While were talking about pages, this just in from the Department of the Obvious: When you get to the last word on a page, you need to turn the page.

Why, oh why, then, do I see student after student chant a page, get to the bottom, and just wait?

Oh, did you want me to go on?

Noooo, well just stare at this page for the next hour or so.

Or at her bat mitzvah, a student will be singing through a prayer that starts on one page and continues to the next, so she does know that she is supposed to actually turn the page. But then she gets to the last word on the first page and starts fumbling and rustling and trying to turn that stubborn page so she can go on. Meanwhile, a good ten or fifteen seconds have gone by, and the prayer has been interrupted.

No matter what is on the next page, whether its a continuation of your part or something that another person leadsget the page turn ready. While you are in the middle of whatever youre singing, just get a finger under the next page. Its something you can absentmindedly do while youre busy concentrating on your present task, and it will make everything run much more smoothly.

Ugh, who likes to be reminded about posture? Stand up straight! Dont slouch! Stop shuing your feet!

Its hard to stand up at the podium on the bimah for however many hours and maintain decent posture. But if you dont, it just doesnt look good. Youve spent so much time and effort preparing and studying, and youre going to waste a lot of it, slouched over the table with your head down mumbling into the book. Your parents will be upset with you, and then theyll be upset with me for not getting you to stand up straighter, as if I have some magic power over your posture.

Do this instead: When you stand at the podium, simply take both of your hands and put them palm down on the table, one in front of each leg. That instantly makes you stand up straight with no effort, plus it has the added benefit of giving you a place for your hands, so you dont start putting them in your pockets or holding them in front of you like you have to go to the bathroom. Which brings us to...