Bar/Bat Mitzvah Basics: A Practical Family Guide to Coming of Age Together

How to manage the process with grace, joy and good sense.

A practical guide that gives parents and teens the "how-to" information they need to navigate the bar/bat mitzvah process and grow as a family through this experience. For the first time in one book, everyone directly involved offers practical insights into how the process can be made easier and more enjoyable for all. Rabbis, cantors and Jewish educators from the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements, parents, and even teens speak from their own experience.
• What's it all about?
• Preparation for Parent and Child
• Tutoring, stress, expectations, enjoyment, planning for children with special needs
• Negotiating the ceremony and celebration
• Designing a creative service, heightening the spiritual exercise, special issues related to divorced and interfaith families, planning a party that neither breaks the bank nor detracts from the inherent spirituality of the event.

Cantor Helen Leneman's specialty is bar/bat mitzvah education. She has worked as a cantor and a b'nai mitzvah teacher in Los Angeles and Baltimore and chairs the B'Nai Mitzvah Educator's Network of CAJE (the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education).