The Bar Mitzvah: History and Practice
The Jewish ritual known as a bar mitzvah is a lot more than a 13th birthday party. On that day, a Jewish boy takes on adult religious responsibilities. To understand the modern bar mitzvah ritual, however, it is first necessary to understand what the Torah and haftarah readings are all about.
It is a custom from the time of Ezra that Jews read aloud sections from the Torah sequentially every Shabbos morning, completing the entire Pentateuch before starting again (currently, it is completed and restarted each Hebrew year, during the Shemini Atzeret festival). The first portion of each weekly reading is also read on the Shabbos afternoon and Monday and Thursday mornings preceding its full reading. Sections are also read on festivals, although these are not part of the regular sequence.
The Syrian-Greek ruler Antiochus IV forbade the Jews from doing this reading. The rabbis therefore instituted an alternative reading from the Prophets, generally selecting a passage that was reminiscent of the corresponding Torah portion. For example, Ex. 15:1-19 records the song which the Israelites sang after escaping Pharaoh and his army at the Sea of Reeds. When that portion was to be read, the rabbis instituted in its place a section including Judges chapter 5, the song that Balak and Deborah sang after the victory over Jabin, the king of the Canaanites.
When the prohibition on the Torah reading was lifted, the reading from the Prophets was retained, and simply added to the ceremony. It is now done after the completion of the Torah reading and called the haftarah, a word meaning completion. In general, only adult men are qualified to read from the Torah and Prophets as part of the ritual, so when a boy reaches his age of majority, it is customary to mark that by having him do the reading. In non-Orthodox synagogues, the boy usually only reads the haftarah, while in Orthodox synagogues, the boy frequently also reads the entire Torah portion for that week. Since the readings are done with a traditional chant that assigns specific melodies to each word, this usually takes a fair amount of study, and the boys generally spend a full year learning it.
The melodies used are nowadays indicated by grammatical signs, called trop, placed around the words by the Masoretes in about 1000 CE. Orthodox boys are usually taught the signs, which would allow them to chant other passages. Non-Orthodox boys usually learn their assigned haftarah by listening to a recording of it and memorizing the melody.