A Mother, Daughter Face Rites as a Team : Religion: Both will become daughters of the commandments in rare <i> b’not mitzvah</i> ceremony.
In his 22 years as a rabbi, Mark Miller has officiated at all kinds of bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies celebrating Jews’ religious maturity and commitment: the usual teen-agers, occasional married couples, pairs of brothers or sisters, even brother-sister duos.
But today, Miller will preside over a Sabbath bat mitzvah ceremony unlike any he has ever conducted: the b’not mitzvah of 4th District Court of Appeal Judge Sheila Prell Sonenshine and her 13-year-old daughter, Mandy.
“This is my first mother and daughter,” Miller said. “But this is a very unique family.”
Indeed. Sonenshine, 45, the daughter of a Las Vegas hotelier and wife of an Israeli-born businessman, has spent years studying the Torah, Talmud and Midrash (rabbinical commentaries through the 12th Century) in preparation for becoming a bat mitzvah --literally, a daughter of the commandments.
Her daughter, a performer in an amateur musical theater troupe, has mastered the complicated prayers and Hebrew chants that she must sing to the congregation today, and freely offered suggestions to both her mother and Cantor Alan Weiner at a final rehearsal Thursday in the Sonenshine family sanctuary--the family is among the temple’s founders.
“That sounds funny!” Mandy said, as her mother changed the wording of a prayer to eliminate references to a male deity, resulting in a somewhat clumsy “Oh God our God.” The two have agreed that in their service, God will be gender-neutral.
“But I like it that way for that one,” the judge replied. Her daughter assented.
Many 13-year-olds might resent having to share the bima, or sanctuary stage, with their mothers, but Mandy, fairly brimming with confidence as her big day approaches, says studying for the ceremony with her mother has brought them closer together than ever.
“I don’t know what it would be like without her,” Mandy said. “It’s been a lot of fun, and it’s given us so much time together.”
For the elder Sonenshine, her bat mitzvah culminates years of serious, intense study of Jewish custom and law that her mentors and her husband, Ygal Sonenshine, call remarkable. The judge has met regularly with Rabbi Miller for about three years to get a grasp of the ancient body of Jewish teachings, and she has gone through the temple’s regular six-week class in bat mitzvah preparation with her daughter.
“She is very intense, very thorough,” Ygal Sonenshine said about his wife. “When she does something, she wants to do it perfectly.”
She has lugged her books and notes on sometimes arcane religious subjects to vacations in London and Paris, Ygal Sonenshine said. He added that while worshiping in Hebrew is second nature to him, “it doesn’t come naturally” to his wife, who was raised in a more secular household and grew up in an era when Jewish girls did not often have bat mitzvah celebrations.
“I went to a Christian Science Sunday school, an Episcopal boarding school, a Jewish university for a year and a Catholic law school,” Judge Sonenshine said. “Neither of my parents were religious in the sense that we were observant, but they were always Jewish. . . . My mother, she believes the whole purpose of religion is to do good, so by that measure, she’s the most religious person I know.”
After marrying Ygal, helping found Temple Bat Yahm and watching her own sons become b’nai mitzvah , Sonenshine decided that one day she, too, would take her place among the Jewish congregation. Since she first brought up the idea of doing it alongside her daughter a few years ago, Mandy has never wavered, the judge said.
“It was kind of a heavy decision to put on her, but from the beginning she’s been enthusiastic,” Judge Sonenshine said. “She’s really proud. This is a project where we’re both on equal footing. Sometimes she says, ‘Mom, I think you need a little more practice.’ ”