Over the course of my Bat Mitzvah process, I learned a lot about myself and my family. I also studied many topics over the course of working on my several papers.
One of my favorite explorations was my major paper topic, although that was also one of the hardest ones to study. It was my favorite because it fits my value of feminism. I also liked studying it because I really like Passover. It was one of the hardest to study because it was the paper where I actually had to research things, and finding good sources on a relatively obscure topic, like feminist food symbols in the Seder, is hard.
I also enjoyed learning about Clearsight. I loved writing about her and rereading the books for research. I also liked thinking about how she fits my values of community, education, critical thinking, feminism, and selflessness, for pretty obvious reasons – she’s my favorite character in Wings of Fire.
I also enjoyed learning about my values. Sure, I knew I had them before, but now I can pinpoint each one and explain why I have that value. Speaking of values, there’s one thing that I feel has changed the most over time: my writing style, which is a value that relates to education. Looking back on my Values Paper, I really do not like it from a writing standpoint. One reason why I don’t like it is that it does not flow well at all. I rewrote a little of it, but I’m not writing all of these papers again, that would take two more years!
One of the things I am most excited for about my Bat Mitzvah is, honestly, being done. I didn’t have much free time while working on my Bat Mitzvah, between homework, essays, and other things. It’ll be nice to get that part of my life back. Another thing that I’ll be glad to be over with is writer’s block. Although I do get writer’s block while writing recreationally, the main source of my writer’s block is assigned papers. Writer’s block is super-frustrating, and I’ll be glad to be done with the main source of it. Yet another thing I’ll be happy to be done with is doing research. As much as I may say that doing research can be fun, most of the time it isn’t. It’s a lot harder to find sources yourself than use ones that are given to you, and that’s the majority of the sources one needs for these papers.
Some advice I have for people just starting out on this process is not procrastinating, and having good time management. For me, schedules help. Another piece of advice I have is persevering. Yes, writer’s block is the worst, but it’s important to keep going. You can keep working by having new ideas. One way to get new ideas is by taking a break. That’s also part of good time management.
Another thing I would like to quickly add – my Bat Mitzvah was postponed due to COVID. Originally we planned to have it in person when COVID was over, but we decided that we would have it virtually instead. Although no one expected that I would have a Zoom mitzvah, it still means a lot that everyone is here, so thanks for coming.
Working on these papers was a long process, and one that I didn’t do alone. First of all, I would like to give a huge thanks to my parents for helping me along this process. I would also like to thank everyone I interviewed for my family values – Aunt Jill, Grandma J, Grandparents Z, my parents again, and Aunt Michelle for finding the interview with my great-great-grandfather Sam. Another thanks goes to Rabbi Tzemah for helping with these papers, and finding the book which I used for my major paper. More thanks goes to Isabel, for proofreading and approving papers. I would also like to thank Rebecca for doing the music and Ray for being the technical director. Last, but definitely not least, I would like to thank Ernie, my mentor, for helping me write these papers. This process would have taken even longer than it already has without his help. Thank you to everyone who supported me along this process, and thanks to you all for coming!
