CCAR RESPONSA
New American Reform Responsa
33. Baby Naming and Bar/Bat Mitzvah
QUESTION: In our congregation Bar/Bat Mitzvah normally participate in the shabbat Torah service to the exclusion of everyone else except the members of the family. We also customarily name babies at our shabbat morning service. A family would like to schedule a baby naming on a shabbat on which a Bar/Bat Mitzvah has been scheduled. There would be no possibility of moving it to a shabbat without Bar/Bat Mitzvah as we have them scheduled for several months ahead. Would the naming of a baby be considered an imposition on the rights of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah? (Harold Nobel, St. Louis MO)ANSWER: There is a good bit of discussion about the rights of various individuals to synagogue honors. Some of these discussions dealt with Torah honors (Meg 32a ff; Shulhan Arukh Orah Hayim 135 ff). Special rules also developed around the recital of the qaddish, especially in those congregations where the mourner felt entitled according to minhag to lead the qaddish or to recite it alone (Shulhan Arukh Yoreh Deah 376.4, Isserles and commentaries). Similar, although somewhat less heated, discussions occurred about other synagogues honors which had become associated with synagogue offices or with certain families. None of these discussions dealt specifically with Bar/Bat Mitzvah and its prerogatives as the minhag which you described was not known in the past. Traditionally other individuals were also called to the Torah when a child was being Bar/Bat Mitzvah and the Bar/Bat Mitzvah usually read only a concluding section of the sidrah. Female babies were traditionally named during the misheberah following the Torah reading and a blessing was recited for them. As the naming was not part of the regular liturgy but only by custom associated with the Torah service, so for us it is not absolutely essential that an aliyah be given to the parents. The baby may be named during another part of the service and the parents as well as the child (if that is the custom) could be brought to the pulpit at that time. This might be a way of avoiding the conflict. It would, however, also be perfectly legitimate to insist that the parents of the child and the baby (if that is the custom) come to the pulpit during the Torah service as the Bar/Bat Mitzvah is part of a public service in which the entire congregation has rights. It is the purpose of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah to indicate that the individual is now a member of a larger congregation with all the privileges, rights, and duties. One of those duties surely is consideration for other individuals at their time of personal joy. This would include a baby naming on the day of a Bar/Bat Mitzvah. Such a stand would reinforce the public nature of the shabbat service; it is not a private gathering which happens to take place in the synagogue. If a number of babies are to be named on a given shabbat and that can not be avoided, then it might be wise to scatter the baby namings throughout the service so that each family will feel that they are being given due honor.June 1989
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