This Life: Teaching Respect to the Young Faithful

Parents were dropping their children off at the synagogue, and the kids, unchaperoned, were treating the joint like the mall. Girls were hanging out in the bathroom, sitting on the countertops and texting their friends, while boys were playing tag football in the social hall and sneaking brownies from under the plastic wrap.

In the sanctuary, she wrote in a rant on the Web site of New Jersey Jewish News, they “are prone to talking unabated through the service, save for the 30 seconds after they’ve just been shushed by people who are wondering where those kids’ parents are.” Even her own did it, she confessed.

The problem got so bad, Ms. Ramer appointed herself a sort of bar mitzvah bouncer, strolling through the hallways and standing guard over the babka like a cross between Severus Snape from Hogwarts and Miss Trunchbull from “Matilda.”

When I was growing up as a Jew in Savannah, Ga., in the 1970s, I watched with ostracized awe at the elaborate grooming and finishing rituals performed by my friends in privileged social circles. Most of this training happened in the late teenage years, when girls would make their debut in the cotillion and boys, known as stags, would chaperon them.

The backbone of the process was a series of etiquette classes in which boys and girls would learn to don white gloves, wear corsages and boutonnieres, write thank-you notes, and mind their p’s and q’s (and R-rated hand movements). Jews, of course, were not invited.

These days, the tables have been turned. Jewish communities around the country, horrified by the appalling lack of manners their children display at bar and bat mitzvahs, are increasingly turning to more-formalized training efforts.

At the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway, a Modern Orthodox day school in Lawrence, N.Y., the school holds weekly academic classes to prepare boys and girls to become bar and bat mitzvah scholars.

But administrators added a separate, in-school program to rehearse the proper etiquette guests should display at these events. The highlight is a mock service in which teachers coach students on how to sit quietly during prayers and listen attentively to remarks made by the rabbi, parents and grandparents. Members of the school staff even make telephone calls to students’ cellphones to prepare them for that eventuality.

“Like many things in life,” said Rabbi Dovid Kupchik, a principal at the school, “if you actually talk to the students about how to behave instead of just assuming they’re going to act a certain way, it’s fresh in their heads. For adults, it’s challenging enough to sit through 20 or 30 minutes of speeches, but for 12- and 13-year-old kids, it’s especially difficult.”

The school also offers instruction on how to behave at the after-party, teaching students the polite way to wait in line at a coat check and how to thank and wish mazel tov to the parents of the celebrant.

At the conclusion of the class, students are asked to sign a contract promising they will uphold certain standards of behavior and be a positive reflection on the school. “It reminds them that it’s not a glorified birthday party they’re attending,” said Rabbi Kupchik, “but a religious celebration.”

In Detroit, Joe Cornell Entertainment has been offering dance classes for preteens since the 1950s. The 12-week courses, which this fall will have over 300 students, are often held in synagogues and are made up primarily of Jewish sixth graders entering the bar and bat mitzvah years, said Steve Jasgur, who bought the company in 1991.

Along with teaching ballroom dancing and popular line dances like the Hustle, Wobble and Gangnam Style, instructors devote special time to teaching bar and bat mitzvah etiquette. Lessons include how to ask someone to dance and why you shouldn’t run off with the decorations.

Bruce Feiler’s newest book, “The Secrets of Happy Families,” will be published in February. “This Life” appears monthly.

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