By Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal
SAN DIEGO–Thursday evening my wife Judy and I returned from visiting our son, daughter-in-law, and two grandsons. Shortly after our first grandson, Neriya, was born, his mother called and asked us to reserve Lag B’Omer of this year for his upshirin. My son, Rabbi Adam Rosenthal, and his wife, Sarah, were following an ancient Kabbalistic custom renewed in our days to wait until Neriya’s third birthday before cutting his hair. Neriya’s upshirin marked the day of transition from toddler to child, or as he put it “a big boy!”
The day could not have arrived soon enough from an aesthetic point of view. Neriya’s hair was sufficiently long to get into his eyes, be pulled back into a ponytail, and cause many strangers to think he was a girl.
Neriya was placed in a special seat of honor and family and close friends formed a semicircle around him. One by one we were invited up to snip off short curls of hair and tell him how proud we were of him and what a big boy he was. Neriya bore the entire ordeal bravely and with great dignity, flinching not even once.
As each guest came up they handed him some coins to put in his brand new tzedakah box. This tzedakah box was a gift from Neriya’s Saba and Savta (grandfather and grandmother). It was shaped like a train and purchased at our Sisterhood’s Traditions gift shop.
After the ceremonial snipping, Adam and Sarah presented him with an aleph-bet wooden puzzle in the shape of a menorah, which symbolized the beginning of his formal Jewish learning. We were all very impressed that Neriya was able to identify many of the Hebrew letters in the puzzle. Chocolate chips on each letter sweetened his experience, reminiscent of the tradition of placing drops of honey on Hebrew letters for a child to lick as he learned, but without the sticky mess. Neriya’s brother, Zecharya, looked on with great interest as Neriyah read. We were not sure which he wanted to taste for himself first, the chocolate chips or the puzzle pieces.
Finally, Adam gave Neriya his first tallit katan, the traditional four cornered tzitzit-adorned undergarment some Jewish boys and men wear all of the time. While I do not wear a tallit katan, Neriya’s father does, a mitzvah he took upon himself while he was attending Patrick Henry High School. Neriya was very excited to receive his first tallit katan and proudly held the tzitzit in his hands and told us all, “they’re for kissing!”
The rest of the day was more conventional. His preschool friends and their parents joined him on the playground for his three-year-old birthday party, where Neriya jumped in a bounce house and ate cake decorated with M&M’s to his heart’s content, before being whisked away to the salon for his first “big boy” haircut. Judy and I were grateful that his mom left most of his curls!
Letting Adam’s hair grow until he was three and cutting it for the first time at an upshirin would have been unthinkable during my days in rabbinical school. However, today’s rabbis are much more traditional than their predecessors, just as my generation is more traditional than those who came before us. It seems to me that the same can be said for the Jews I know who take Judaism seriously and make it fundamental in their lives. Each modern generation of committed Jews seems to be more observant than those who came before
There are many mitzvot being renewed today which were once thought archaic and irrelevant. One needs to look no farther than to the mikva which will soon be built alongside Tifereth Israel Synagogue to confirm this, as well as the number of Jews who have become kosher in the last few years. Even Temple Solel, a Reform congregation in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, recently announced that it has kosher catering available for its members!
Even at my “ripe old age” I continue to find new meaning in rituals and celebrations I ignored for many years. The opportunities for Jewish growth are innumerable. All we need to do is open our minds and hearts and lives to the possibility of the old becoming new.
I can hardly wait for the day Neriya’s brother, Zecharya, joins him among the newly shorn.
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Rabbi Rosenthal is spiritual leader of Tifereth Israel Synagogue in San Diego