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My soul is now complete
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Posted by RaisingBakersfield Mon Apr 21, 2008 17:38:02 PDT
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Ariella Goldstein loves Passover. It’s a time for her, her twin brother Roy, their parents and other family members to get together, celebrate and “talk about stuff.”

And she already knows how the conversation is likely to go this year: “I think everyone’s going to be talking about my bat mitzvah,” the 12-year-old student of Christa McAuliffe Elementary School said.

Like her mother, Ariella chose to follow the Israeli tradition of celebrating becoming “someone who is responsible for doing good deeds” at age 12, not 13, like some girls in America — and Jewish boys everywhere — do.

“My soul is now complete because I turned 12,” Ariella said.

Dorit Goldstein, born in Israel, is raising her children biculturally and bilingually, in Hebrew and English.

She said that, like girls in Israel, Ariella chose not to read from the Torah at her synagogue and to celebrate her bat mitzvah at home.

“In Israel girls don’t read out of the Torah because it’s sort of a boys’ thing,” Ariella said. “I decided not to read out of the Torah but just make a nice speech.”

“And it’s OK,” her mother said. “The whole thing is not about the party — it’s about becoming a different person.”

'A FULL MEMBER'

Ariella’s rabbi, Paul Gordon, of the conservative Congregation B’nai Jacob, said girls reach the age of majority earlier under Jewish law: at 12 plus one day, whereas boys reach it at 13 plus one day.

“They are counted as a full member of the community. They’re responsible for their own actions.” But although they begin to be treated more like adults, it doesn’t mean that they can get married yet, Gordon said.

Rites of passage and milestones were themes Ariella explored in the speech she wrote and delivered to friends and loved ones at her southwest Bakersfield home last Saturday.

“Becoming a Bat Mitzvah is a very important stage in a girl’s life,” Ariella wrote. “Women receive their godly soul in different parts of their lives. First, we receive a third of our soul when we are born. We receive the next third of our soul when we are given our Jewish name. The final third is received when we reach the age of 12. It is at that age when we assume the responsibilities of a woman.

“God has now given me the ability to deal with my responsibilities and the willpower to overcome my daily struggles,” she said. “I can no longer blame my parents when things go wrong and I have to learn to say that it was my fault. Also, I have to be held accountable for my actions.”

A PROUD AND GRATEFUL MOM

“Every Passover is special because we get to celebrate our freedom,” Dorit Goldstein said about the weeklong holiday, which begins Saturday at sundown in remembrance of God’s liberation of the Israelites from slavery.

According to the second book of the Bible, the Jews were instructed to sacrifice a lamb and mark the doors of their houses with its blood so they could be spared the judgment God was about to bring upon their captors.

“Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you: and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt,” the account says in Exodus 12:13.

This year, the celebration of freedom will be extra special for Dorit Goldstein because it will be Ariella’s first as a woman — spiritually.

“She’s still a kid, she’s always going to be my little girl. But it’s really different. It’s a girl that’s really growing.”

MIRACLE TWINS

Dorit and her husband, David Goldstein, who is originally from New York, had wanted to have children for a long time but couldn’t.

Then they tried in-vitro fertilization, which is how their twins were conceived. They were born in Inglewood, N.J., Dorit Goldstein said.

“On their announcement card we put, ‘Our miracle twins,’” she said. “They are miracles to us.”

The family moved to Bakersfield six years ago.

Rabbi Gordon said of them: “They’re active members of the synagogue who are kind, caring and loving, and give of themselves freely.”

Ariella said she and Roy share a special sixth-sense type of connection.

“Me and my brother,” she said excitedly, “my dad will ask us a question and we’ll both yell out the same answer.”

In last Saturday’s speech, Ariella had some special words for her brother: “You are always there cheering me on, and are always there for me whenever I get hurt. I love playing and spending time with you because you are the definition of fun.”

When asked if Roy was envious because he has to wait a year to have his bar mitzvah, she said not really — well, maybe just a little.

Either way, he’s probably really busy preparing for it already.

“As soon as we’re done with her bat mitzvah, he’s going to start learning his portion of the Torah,” their mother said last week.

For the celebration of his becoming “someone who is responsible for doing good deeds,” his mother, an artisan, plans to make a Jewish prayer shawl called a tallit, which is customary for boys to wear, she said.

And if Roy is anything like his twin, he’s sure to embrace his new responsibilities as a spiritual man at 13 wholeheartedly.

“We say Kaddish (a special prayer) every Friday night before dinner and light the Shabbat candles,” Ariella said last week. “I’ve made a commitment that I’m going to light the Shabbat candles every Friday night” now that her soul is complete.

“As my last twelve years have zoomed by, I can see how much I have changed,” she said at the end of her speech. “And I am still changing. But becoming a Bat Mitzvah now means that I am a woman and that I alone am responsible for my actions. I’ve got more mistakes to make and more things to learn so the best advice I can give myself is to never give up and to keep trying every day.”

 

Originally posted at http://www.bakersfield.com/... on Tuesday, April 15, 2008.

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