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Dear Miriam,
I am preparing for my daughter’s bat mitzvah in a few months and starting to get our guest list ready. Right now we’re stuck on whether to invite the members of our extended families with whom we have strong political disagreements. The service is not going to be traditional, so some of these people are also likely to have negative feelings about what our Jewish lives look like, in addition to our politics. Even so, if we invite them, they’re likely to come. How should we proceed?
Signed,
Mitzvah Mom
Dear Mom,
There’s really nothing worse than guests who say yes to an invitation knowing that they’re going to be miserable at the event! So before I get to your question, readers, hear this: If you are invited to an event (family or otherwise) where 1) you are likely to be miserable, and/or 2) you are likely to make other people there miserable with your feelings and opinions, stay home! If there’s one takeaway from Covid on this five-year anniversary month, it’s that you hardly need an excuse anymore to avoid going to an event. Only go if you are committed to bringing simcha (joy) to the gathering!
I think the same kind of also applies to you. During Covid, people had to drastically pare down invite lists to all kinds of events, if they were able to have them in person at all, and guests (or non-guests) understood the limitations. And in this case, lucky for you, you don’t really care if the extended family members in question are gracious or not about being invited or not. You don’t want them there? They shouldn’t be there.
Even more important, though, is how your daughter feels. If she can’t imagine her bat mitzvah without ultra-conservative great-aunt whoever, then you should invite her. If she loves the idea of showing her bro-ey cousin how radically reimagined a service can be, she should have that opportunity. Then, for your daughter’s sake, you should welcome them with arms that are as own as you can muster.
On the flip side, if she doesn’t want argumentative, unsupportive, likely to be critical people at her bat mitzvah, she gets to make that call, and you get to back her up. Someone’s upset? Tell them your daughter’s first act as a Jewish adult was to be in charge of the guest list. Someone wants to criticize you for taking that path? Well, fine, you already know you have different outlooks to life. A polite approach could be, “We chose to limit guests only to the people closest to us who we feel will really appreciate the unique way in which we are celebrating this occasion.”
If your parents or in-laws insist that some of their relatives need to be there, invite them to host a post bat mitzvah celebratory event at a different time. If they’re relentless about people needing to participate in this service on this day, see if a Zoom option is available so these relatives can see but not comment directly to you about the goings-on. If they’re really, really relentless, make it clear that if these people come, the relative who insisted on their attendance is the point person for any and all complaints, and that you reserve the right not to speak to them at all.
More likely than not, you will read this as a cathartic fantasy and then invite the people because also? This is what families are and what families do. But, just in case you can read this as reality, you have my utmost permission to make the guest list full of the people who will celebrate your daughter, your family, your service, and everything that you are doing to launch your daughter into adulthood.
Be well, and mazel tov!
Miriam
