News Coverage

Seattle Times: "The Seattle Jewish Film Festival Celebrates its 13th Year with Bar and Bat Mitzvah Exhibit"

Mar. 30, 2008

Stuart Eskenazi, Seattle Times Staff Reporter

The Seattle Jewish Film Festival turns 13 this year -- the momentous age at which Jewish children pass into adulthood with a bar or bat mitzvah.

"When I saw the number 13, I knew we had to celebrate this marker," said Pamela Lavitt, festival director.

But instead of taking the easy route and renting out a Glendale Country Club banquet room, the festival is marking its "coming of age" with an exhibit showcasing the breadth and depth of bar and bat mitzvahs in the Pacific Northwest. The exhibit will be on display at the Museum of History & Industry theater lobby through April.

Leading up to the festival, the sponsoring American Jewish Committee and the Washington State Jewish Historical Society sent out a call to area Jews to submit mementos of their bar or bat mitzvahs, or those of their children.

The result is a curated scrapbook of everything from photographs to embossed party napkins to speeches given by bar mitzvah boys -- confirmations of a religious rite-of-passage ceremony in which family, duty and service lay the underpinnings for the festive receptions that often follow.

Excerpt of bar mitzvah speech, 1944

"Today, in this time of tragedy and pain that cover the bosom of the Earth, these days of incredible suffering that is being inflicted on our fellow Jews in the inferno that is Europe, the importance of my bar mitzvah assumes a very serious tone. And it is in addition to the religious duties that are asked of us by God and our Rabbis, the enormous responsibility further arises to take an interest and to help in every possible manner the millions of our brothers who are being persecuted solely for the crime of being born of Jewish parents, as you and I are."

Morris Capeluto delivered this melancholy speech in his ancestral Ladino language to Congregation Ezra Bessaroth in Seattle on the occasion of his bar mitzvah in February 1944. The words were written by Nessim Yeudah Israel, a Jewish scholar descending from a family of rabbis from the Greek isle of Rhodes.

But the sentiments were Capeluto"s.

"This was a somber time, so it was appropriate that the speech itself be very serious," said Capeluto, of Seward Park.

Now a great-grandfather, Capeluto has seen the tone of bar mitzvahs change over generations. In his day, the bar mitzvah focused almost exclusively on the religious ceremony -- a boy, after months of preparatory study with a rabbi or cantor, reading a portion of the Torah in front of his entire synagogue on a Sabbath morning.

Accompanying celebrations, however, tended to be quite modest. After synagogue, a family might serve cake to the congregation. The next day, the bar mitzvah boy might invite friends over for sandwiches and ice cream.

"And that was about it," Capeluto says. "To me, a bar mitzvah should be about a young man reaching a certain point of maturity, becoming accountable for his actions and assuming the obligation of involving himself in his community."


Stuart Eskenazi: 206-464-2293 or
seskenazi@seattletimes.com

Copyright 2008 The Seattle Times Company
Article with images
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Photo Caption: Eugene Normand, middle with boutonniere, admires his cake at his 1955 bar mitzvah. Just as a tiered cake is a signature of any proper wedding reception, the sheet cake is a tradition of a bar or bat mitzvah celebration.

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Exhibit: "Coming of Age in Seattle: Celebrating the Pacific Northwest Bar/Bat Mitavah"

Through April, Museum of History & Industry theater lobby, 2700 24th Ave E., Seattle; free with Film Festival screenings or MOHAI admission.