In Which I Celebrate my Bat Mitzvah

This week I turn twelve, so this morning we celebrated my Bat Mitzvah.  A Bat Mitzvah ceremony has to take place on the Sabbath (Saturday), or on a Monday or Thursday morning, because Mondays and Thursdays are Torah reading days.  Anyway, here are pictures.

Here I am with my family before the service.  That red necklace that I am wearing is my Bat Mitzvah present.

And here I am wearing a tallit, or prayer shawl, for the first time.

This is our congregation.  For a proper Bat Mitzvah ceremony with Torah reading and everything to take place, you need a minyan, a prayer quorum of ten or more Jewish adults.  Being new in town, the only people we knew were Penny-Gwen, our upstairs neighbor (far left), and Carina, our downstairs neighbor (far right), neither of whom are adults.  However, we asked them to round up everyone they knew to come to my Bat Mitzvah, and they did a pretty good job! This is our congregation.

 

And...close-up of the right side of our congregation...

...And...the left.

Here I am leading services!

Leading services from the front.

We gave our local fire fighter the honor of carrying the Torah around, and I walked after him.  The congregation lined up to touch and kiss the Torah and greet me and tell me how well I was doing.

And here I am reading Torah.  This is the first of three aliyot.  An aliyah is an honor whereby an individual is called up to the Torah with his or her Hebrew name.  He or she then recites some blessings, Torah (at least three verses) is read, and a blessing is recited again.  For this first aliyah, we chose to honor my father.  The two women you see here are gabbaim, holding the scroll open, making sure I don't lose my place, and correcting my mistakes.

And here is the second aliyah.  For this one we had a bit of a puzzle.  We of course wanted to honor my mother as well, but Jewish law states that family members cannot take consecutive aliyot.  In the end, we gave the second aliyah to the oldest member of our congregation.

And here is the third aliyah, which went to my mother, of course.

After the Torah reading, the Torah was paraded around again (this time by our local ballerina) and I walked after it.  Once again, the congregation lined up to touch and kiss the Torah and congratulate me.

After the Torah was put away, I gave my speech! In case you can't read that tiny piece of paper, it says, "Thank you for coming to my Bat Mitzvah."

Speechifying.

Here I am hugging my family as they wish me a hearty "Mazal Tov!" after the ceremony.

And the food.  Can't forget the food.  A Saturday Bat Mitzvah would have a real luncheon but because mine was on a Monday morning we didn't have to provide as much.  So we just served donuts, brownies, and punch.

And here are our congregation's senior citizens enjoying the refreshments.

In Which We Rearrange Our Home and My Parents Get Prayer Shawls

Last night when we were settling in for bed my parents realized that our bedroom is just too small for our family, and that that will be even more the case when our adoption is complete.  So they decided to switch the bedroom and the parlor.  Here are some updated photos of our home.  This is the parlor; that little blue couch is a guest bed.

This is our playroom.  Mom and Dad are adamant that the largest room remain the playroom, which I think is really, really sweet of them! In the toybox is Maayan's doll; she also loves the dollhouse.

And the bedroom, with everyone tucked into bed.  The lumpy brown bed contains my parents; Maayan is in the little red bed.  I am peeking out at you from the pink flowered bed...peek-a-boo!

This is a picture of my parents wearing prayer shawls, or tallitot.  All Jewish men and some Jewish women wear them when they pray.  I will get one at my Bat Mitzvah.  In this picture, Dad is also wearing a kippah, or skullcap, worn by Jewish men and some Jewish women when praying.

In Which I Introduce Myself, My Family, and Our Home

Greetings world! My name is Liora Mayim and I am eleven years old.  I am a member of the Mayim otter family.  In this picture, I am with my dad Kyle, little sister Maayan (she's three-and-a-half), and mom Jennifer.

This is a close-up portrait of me.  As I said, I am eleven, soon to be twelve.  Because I am a Jewish otter, when I turn twelve I will have a coming-of-age ceremony called a Bat Mitzvah.  I will lead services, read from the Torah, and give a speech.  I am already practicing and am getting very excited--and maybe just a little nervous too!

This is my sister, Maayan.  She can be adorable...but quite the handful too! She likes to run around and bounce big balls, and because our father is the swim coach, she (and I) can already swim quite well! We like to go for family swims.

This is my mother, Jennifer.  She designs fashion accessories using sea shells.  She made her pendant and my purse.  Although she and my father go by their English names (they do have Hebrew names as well), the two of them decided to give us girls Hebrew names only.

And this is my father, Kyle.  Dad is the swim coach for all the children in our village.  He can get the most nervous child into the water, and he loves to take me on adventures.

After we took introductory photos, it was time to move in and get settled.  We have three rooms in our apartment: a big room in the middle, and smaller rooms on the sides.  The one on the right is slightly smaller than the one on the left; Mom and Dad decided that would be the bedroom.  Except for a baby bath the last people left, we have no furniture for that room yet.  This is a picture of the room on the left, our parlor.  The desk is for Mom's fashion design projects.  I am not allowed in without permission and Maayan is not allowed in without an adult.

This is a photo of Maayan and me with our new dolls.  Maayan's is made of hard plastic and is fairly indestructible, exactly what she needs.  Mine is much more delicate and is made of beads strung together; we have decided that she will live on the top shelf of the desk so Maayan cannot get to her.

And...here we are in the playroom.  As you can see, Maayan has quickly forgotten her doll in favor of kicking balls around.

 

While I talk about our family, I should mention that Mom and Dad are passionate about adoption and always have been.  It isn't because they couldn't have kids--after all, they had Maayan and me.  Rather, Mom and Dad just feel that this is a good way for them to help the world.  We have an awesome social worker, Ms. R., working with us; Mom and Dad asked to be approved for a sibling group of three so she is working on making that happen.  Ms. R. is really great: she cares about our family as a whole, not just as customers.  She even sat down with Maayan and me (no parents!) and went over what adoption means and if we are ready for more siblings.  We said of course we are!