Bat Miztvah [Photograph]

The girl in the photograph, Cecelia Nealon-Shapiro, reads from the Torah as part of her bat mitzvah, a rite of passage ceremony, at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City. Prior to this day, she attended classes in Jewish history and tradition, Hebrew, and recitation at the Reform synagogue, where girls now participate in a rite formerly reserved for boys, the bar mitzvah. Following the service, the family and guests, including several girls who were adopted by American families from the same orphanage in China, celebrated at an elaborate party.

At age 12 or 13, a Jewish girl becomes a "bat mitzvah" which literally means "daughter of the commandment." Bat mitzvah marks the time when a Jewish child is old enough to perform the mitzvot (commandments) and is considered an adult in the religious community. Neither the bar mitzvah for boys, nor the bat mitzvah for girls are formal religious ceremonies. The bat mitzvah observance is not carried out in Orthodox and Chasidic synagogues where women are not allowed to lead prayers.

Learning about Jewish history, customs, and holidays is a way that modern Jewish communities seek to transmit tradition and law to a new generation. The spirit of the bat mitzvah also includes choosing service to the community, representing engagement with the larger world beyond the family and living according to the values of their faith.

Photograph by James Estrin, "Journey From a Chinese Orphanage to a Jewish Rite of Passage," The New York Times, March 8, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/08/nyregion/08batmitzvah.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2 (accessed March 31, 2010). Annotated by Susan Douglass.

Bar Miztvah [Photograph]

The three boys in the photograph belong to a group of Israeli boys who came together at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in 2008 for a mass bar mitzvah celebration. The orthodox social service organization Colel Chabad arranged the celebration for orphans and needy families. Several prominent Israeli rabbis participated in the celebration of this important Jewish rite of passage to adulthood.

"Bar Mitzvah" literally means "son of the commandment." This rite of passage marks the time, at the age of 13 for boys, when children are obligated to observe the commandments of Jewish law. Technically, no ceremony is needed, because a boy automatically passes this milestone upon becoming 13 years old. In recent times, the bar mitzvah has become popular and widespread as an individual and family observance. During Shabbat (congregational prayer) services on a Saturday shortly after the child's 13th birthday, the celebrant is called up to the Torah to recite a blessing over the weekly reading. In preparation for this day, the young boy spends time learning the Torah portion and prayers. Community service is often a part of this preparatory period before the bar mitzvah. A speech before the congregation occasion traditionally begins with the phrase, "Today I am a man. . ." The father also recites a blessing.

Photograph copyright Chabad.org from article at <a class="external" href="http://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/933026/jewish/Mass-Bar-Mitzvah-at-Western-Wall.htm">http://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/933026/jewish/Mass-Bar-Mitzvah-at-Western-Wall.htm</a> (accessed March 30, 2010). Annotated by Susan Douglass.

Boys' Initiation Mask (keweke) Papua New Guinea [Object]

This mask worn by boys during initiation rituals in Papua New Guinea is made of painted bark cloth and canvas stretched over a cane frame. The long fiber fringe adds movement to the mask, which is worn during dances and other secret rituals that that comprise boyhood initiation rites. These rituals often involve disguises, as initiates endure trials, receive food and drink from villagers, and accept the knowledge of elders. The mask form is also a reference to the spirits of ancestors who have come through these life stages and continued on. The long, oval masks are similar to the gope spirit boards that represent the ancestors at home, protecting its inhabitants. This mask is from the Wapo Creek or Era River area near the Gulf of Papua, though there are many other styles and forms of initiation masks as well as face and body paint used by the numerous tribes in the region.

Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Wapo Creek, Papuan Gulf, , Melanesia, Cane, wood, bark cloth, canvas, paint, fiber, Accession number: B85.0350, <a class="external" href="http://www.imj.org.il/imagine/collections/item.asp?itemNum=224467">http://www.imj.org.il/imagine/collections/item.asp?itemNum=224467</a> (accessed March 26, 2010). Annotated by Susan Douglass.

Dan Passport Masks, Liberia / Cote d'Ivoire [Object]

This small, mask ( 9.5 cm high and 5 cm wide) carved from wood is called a "passport" mask because it was worn on the body, kept in a leather pouch, or sewn onto a piece of cloth to represent group or family affiliation. Passport masks are used by the Dan people, a group of several hundred thousand people in the western part of the Côte d’Ivoire and into Liberia. They live in a forested region bordering the savannah in the north, for whom farming cocoa, coffee, rice and manioc, and hunting game and fish provide rural livelihoods. Each village is governed by a chief and council of elders. Both boys and girls receive formal recognition of their adulthood and readiness for marriage by participating in initiation rituals. Specific teachings, a period of time in seclusion in the bush for boys, and circumcision rituals for both genders are included in the rites of passage. The masks are miniature copies of family masks which act as witnesses to initiation ceremonies and are believed to offer protection like amulets when their owner is away from home. 1

Photo of Dan Passport mask from The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Dan people of Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire, Accession number B06.2374, <a class="external" href="http://www.imj.org.il/imagine/collections/item.asp?itemNum=324035">http://www.imj.org.il/imagine/collections/item.asp?itemNum=324035</a> (accessed March 5, 2009). Annotated by Susan Douglass.

Teaching Traditional Polynesian Navigation [Still Image]

On the Micronesian island of Satawal, north of Papua New Guinea (about 2000 miles east of the island group of Hawaii), children sit on a canoe watching a ceremony related to the heritage of traditional navigation. The children are witnesses to a Pwo ceremony—the first held in over 50 years—inducting master navigators into a select group of Micronesians. Five Polynesians, including several Hawaiians, earned this honor by continuing the tradition of "wayfinding" on the Pacific Ocean that was responsible for the settlement of nearly all habitable islands in the vast ocean as much as 1000 years ago. Mau Piailug, a 76-year-old master navigator, conducted the ceremony as one of the last who inherited the skill marked by the journey of the Hawaiian double-hulled canoe Hokule'a on a Hawaii to Tahiti voyage of more than 2,200 miles, in 1976. The canoe was built from 400-year-old logs donated by a group of native Alaskans because there are no more suitable trees in Hawaii’s forests. It was built in the traditional manner by more than 1000 volunteers. The voyage to Tahiti proved that centuries prior to European oceanic voyages, Polynesians navigated in such canoes merely by reading nature: stars, clouds, waves, and the behavior of sea birds. More than 16 such voyaging canoes have since been built, and one of them, the double-hulled canoe Alingano Maisu, was sailed to Satawal and presented to Mau Piailug to recognize his role in transmitting his skill to the next generation of navigators. Piailug’s teaching has taken the canoe Hokule'a across the Polynesian triangle from Hawaii to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) to Aotearoa (New Zealand)—voyages equal to circumnavigating the globe twice.

"Today [the ceremony] was not about us. Today was about our children continuing their tradition, culture and ancestry," said Nainoa Thompson, one of the navigator-inductees and members of the 1976 voyage. A Hawaiian language aphorism, Kapu Na Keiki meaning "Hold Sacred the Children" expresses Thompson’s vision as a navigator and educator. Training the next generation of navigatores to uphold this tradition involves more than just skills of sailing. It addresses the multiple problems faced by many indigenous groups today: healthy nutrition, avoiding drug and alcohol abuse, and securing education and employment skills, as well as caring for the environment. The Polynesian Voyaging Society, which built and maintains the voyaging canoe Hokule`a, carries out programs for exposing youth to the pleasures and challenges of sailing and wayfinding as a means of teaching character and sound living practices as well as carrying on the sacred indigenous tradition of the peoples of the Pacific. Among the programs carried out in Hawaii, high school students paddle one- and two-man canoes about 100 miles along Hawaii’s coastline in the shadow of the Hokule‘a, to hone and test their wayfinding skills.

Gary T. Kubota, "Navigators' journey of spirit, skill ends," Star Bulletin, March 18, 2007, <a class="external" href="http://archives.starbulletin.com/2007/03/18/news/story04.html">http://archives.starbulletin.com/2007/03/18/news/story04.html</a>; and "Kapu Na Keiki," Polynesian Voyaging Society, <a class="external" href="http://pvs.kcc.hawaii.edu/kapunakeiki.html">http://pvs.kcc.hawaii.edu/kapunakeiki.html</a> (accessed December 8, 2009).

Girl with Mossi Doll, Burkina Faso [Still Image]

This girl is from a village in the Mossi country of Burkina Faso (a landlocked country in West Africa). The doll she is holding is a traditional wooden figurine made from one piece of wood standing on a broader base. The doll displays the characteristics of an adult woman, with suggestions of facial features and elaborate hairstyles, and usually with mature female breasts that represent the fulfillment of motherhood. Scarification [scarring] patterns on the body that traditionally mark passage to adulthood are also represented by carved patterns. Mossi dolls are typically carved by male blacksmiths and are given to girls for play. The child calls it biiga ("child"), and carries the doll about with her, tucking it into the waistband of her skirt, and pretends to feed, wash and groom it. Sometimes it is adorned with beads, cowrie shells, dressed with pieces of leather or cloth, and the girl might bring it wildflowers. In the market, a girl may place her doll on the edge of a merchant's mat and expect to receive a small sample of the wares—a few peanuts, a pastry, or a piece of fruit.

Mossi dolls are also the focus of rituals associated with motherhood. When a young girl displays her doll to older women, they may respond, "May God give you many children." At festivals, if a child gives her doll to an adult to hold, it is customary to give the child a small present when giving the doll back. Other rituals include the use of dolls to ensure fertility in marriage (accomplished by giving the doll a name). Handling the doll with care is seen as auspicious for childbearing and survival of children. Before the marriage ceremony, a young woman carries the doll on her back to the market, and a few days after marriage, she is given some straw in place of the doll and asked which sex her first child will be. Mossi dolls are passed down through female generations, and before a woman gives birth, she washes the doll she played with in childhood before washing her own baby. Similarly, the first drops of milk are given to the doll, and it is again carried on the mother's back before the infant is placed there for the first time. According to reports culled by anthropologists, these rituals were to ensure that the newborn infant's soul enters the world of its parents, called yisa biiga, or "to call the child," and "to prevent the child from returning," or gidga ti da biiga lebera me, to the world of the ancestral spirits. Women who remain childless after a few years of marriage use the dolls for votive purposes, adorning them with cowry shells and carrying them everywhere while expressing their wish for a child.1

Photograph: Burkina Faso, 2006, village of Dablo, little girl with her doll, # EPV0645.JPG, Art and Life in Africa Project, The University of Iowa, The School of Art and Art History, <a class="external" href="http://www.uiowa.edu/~africart/Changing%20Burkina/index.htm">"Changing Burkina"</a> (accessed November 23, 2009). Annotated by Susan Douglass.

Custom of Cutting the Topknot, Thailand [Photographs]

The custom described in the text by Phya Anuman Rajadhon is presented as it was traditionally practiced in Central Siam. The head of an infant was shaven as part of the khwan ceremony celebrating its survival and welcoming into the family. Some of the hair over the soft part of the infant's skull was left to grow into a topknot, to be cut in another ceremony when the child came of age. The author associates the custom with Indian cultural influence in the distant past, and documents its relationship to Buddhist practice. The second text and the photographs from the author's family collection documents the continuation of the practice among modern, urban families, but also shows its modification in modern times. The author reports that it has become much less common among contemporary families, amounting to a tiny percentage of the children in the author’s primary school. In addition, the topknot was cut at a much earlier stage in the child’s life, at the age of about 6-7 years, assuming that some of the children still wore it in the primary school.

The text describing the custom is from the 1968 book by Phya Anuman Rajadhon (1888-1969) Essays on Thai Folklore. The author is a prolific and well regarded literary figure and university professor. Although he did not receive formal academic training in anthropology, his writings have constituted a major source for anthropologists and others on customs from Siam, the traditional name for Thailand. The second text and photographs are from the baby photo album on a website by Thailand’s most prominent teenage blogger, Panrit "Gor" Daoruang (1986- ), who began an online diary at the age of twelve, and chronicled his own life and aspects of Thai culture and contemporary life. The site also teaches both English and Thai language through stories, quizzes, and audio files. The site attracted the attention of the Office of the National Culture Commission for its value in promoting Thailand’s image to a worldwide audience.

Text: Phya Anuman Rajadhon, Essays on Thai Folklore, 3rd ed. (Thai Inter-Religious Commission for Development, Sathirakoses Nagapradipa Foundation,1988), 281–83. Text and Photographs: Panrit "Gor" Daoruang, “Top Knot Cutting,” Thailand Life, http://www.thailandlife.com/my-thai-childhood/top-knot-cutting.html (accessed November 24, 2009). Annotated by Susan Douglass.

The Book of Rites, The Birth of a Child [Literary Excerpt]

The "Patterns of the Family," is drawn from The Book of Rites, a text that defined Confucian rituals of all kinds. It is important to note that Confucianism was not an organized religion, but viewed the family as the main locus of worship and the head of each family was, in essence, the "priest" or person in charge of religious observances. The rites described in this text tend to focus on the aristocratic elite. It is not known the extent to which the rituals described in this text represent an idealized form of ceremony and the degree to which these rites were actually practiced.

The text emphasizes a strict hierarchy of gender and class, based on the underlying belief that social order prevails when all people understand their positions in life. To a certain extent, social status was relative, so that a woman might be regarded as her husband's inferior, but was considered a superior to her husband's concubines. Likewise, an adult son (often, even in the case of an emperor) was expected to obey his mother.

According to this text, the newborn child was incorporated into the family in gradual stages. First, the pregnant mother was confined to a side apartment. Three days after the birth, divinations were made to choose a man (not the father) to lift up the child outside the birth chamber. Next, in an exorcistic rite, the master of archery was to shoot six raspberry-wood arrows with a mulberry bow: one toward Heaven, one toward earth, and the others toward the four cardinal directions. At the end of the child's third month, the child's hair was cut in gender-specific ways. At this time, the father finally received the child, but only after he and the mother had purified themselves by bathing.

The isolation of the new mother and child indicates a belief that contact with the birth process was inauspicious or defiling. It is also possible that the haircut administered before its first presentation to its father was linked to a practice mentioned in later medical texts, in which the infant's polluted "fetal hair" must be shaved off before its presentation to the family. The Book of Rites is concerned with the ceremonies that mark the child's gradually developing relationship with its father and the outside world. This work, like other transmitted texts, has little to say about rituals concerned with the actual process of childbirth.

"The Pattern of the Family." Chap. 10 in Liji (Book of Rites). Translation based on James Legge, Li chi: Book of Rites. Quoted in Muller, Max, ed. The Sacred Books of the East. Vols. XXVII and XXVIII. Clarendon: Oxford University Press, 1885. Reprint, New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1967. Vol. 1, 471-76. Annotated by Anne Kinney.

2009-01-21

Anne Kinney

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Child with Purple Plastic Doll near Kumasi, Ghana [Photograph]

The girl in the photograph is from the Asante peoples in Ghana. She is holding a purple plastic baby doll of a type that is frequently found in markets in Ghana. The doll is both imported from Taiwan and made domestically in Ghana. The modern plastic doll is based on an older, traditional form of wooden figurine manufactured by village blacksmiths to represent the adult, female figure. Girls play with these dolls they call biiga ("child"), by caring for them, dressing and feeding them, and sometimes tucking them into the waistbands of their skirts just as women carry infants in cloth wrappers wrapped around their torsos. There are significant rituals associated with girls, including the belief that proper care for the doll can ensure fertility and survival of children. Girls also carry the dolls for display when they go among adults, and might expect a token present when, for example, they place their doll on the ground in front of a merchant in the market. Wealthier families and those in the towns have come to consider the plastic dolls to be more prestigious than the traditional wooden ones. Unlike the Mossi dolls, however, the plastic versions are shaped like a girl rather than a woman, and have generally Caucasian features and western dress.

Eliot Elisofon

"Child with Purple Plastic Doll near Kumasi, Ghana," Color Photograph by Eliot Elisofon, 1971, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Image number EEPA EECL 1015; Monochrome photograph from Roy, Christopher D. "Mossi Dolls." African Arts 14, no. 4 (August 1981): 47-88. Annotated by Susan Douglass.

1971-00-00

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