Confirmation, a practice that originated in the first decade of the 19th century in what was to become Germany, was a public ceremony in which young people in their teens affirmed their commitment to Judaism and the Jewish community. The term was borrowed from the Church. Confirmation, as is well documented, went on to be celebrated among Conservative and Reform congregations in the United States.
The Reform Jewish leaders who created confirmation considered it an additional step to the traditional bar mitzvah that they regarded only as the “technical’ change in status regarding Jewish law. Studying for the confirmation ceremony, always celebrated on Shavuot, provided knowledge, and the ceremony indicated commitment.
At the well-known Beth Emunah Orthodox congregation in Tulsa, Oklahoma, founded in 1916, the girls wore beautiful white dresses, and the boys were handsome in their suits and ties, with a white carnation in their lapels. Old photographs tell the story of the last confirmation, in 1933. There were no ceremonies until 1936, when the practice was reinstated and dubbed “commencement.”
Confirmation in Atlanta
The oldest confirmation service in my birthplace, Atlanta, Georgia, was in the 1880s at the Temple, Atlanta’s Reform synagogue, founded in 1865. The pictures on the wall at the Temple include every confirmation since the late 1890s. There, the boys added a carnation to their lapels.
Confirmation was not held in Atlanta’s newly established Conservative synagogue, Beth Israel, until 1907. Here, the girls carried beautiful flowers. The local newspapers had always reported on the confirmation at the Temple, but now another synagogue’s confirmation service was also featured and listed the names of confirmands.
Washington Street had become the “synagogues street” when Ahavath Achim and Shearith Israel moved there after World War I.
Confirmation in the newly Conservative Ahavath Achim (originally an Orthodox synagogue) began in 1908 when Rabbi Joseph Levine became the rabbi but at the time was only for boys. The girls celebrated a type of Jewish “sweet 16” event.
The main confirmation event in Atlanta continued to be held at the Reform Temple. Its membership consisted of the richest Jews in the community. Therefore, elaborate preparations were made for the confirmations.
Parents of the confirmands were encouraged to invite their Christian friends, and many known Atlanta Christians attended. Local newspapers quoted their comments, and until the Leo Frank lynching in 1915, the confirmation service was a very open event. From 1916, Christians rarely attended, and the members of the Temple were no longer interested in “outsiders” being present.
During the fateful year 1929, described in the fundraising book for the new Shearith Israel synagogue kept by my father, Louis Geffen, smaller contributions came in for the new synagogue building, that came into use in September 1929, two months before the stock market crash. At the end of January 1930, the new synagogue officially opened but did not begin marking confirmations until the 1940s.
Confirmations in Or Ve Sholom, the Sephardic synagogue, only began in the 1930s during WWII, even though the synagogue had been established in 1916. The rabbi, Joseph Cohen, and his younger son, Ned, were close personal friends. I attended one of the confirmations there after the synagogue moved to an area of Atlanta (the north side) where many Jews relocated, including my parents and I in 1949. Rabbi Cohen and his son Alan, who possessed a beautiful voice, had trained the confirmands in the traditional Sephardi melodies. Only later in Israel did I again hear and recall those melodies.
My confirmation
When I was 14, in 1952, co-ed confirmations were still held at the original Shearith synagogue, as well as commencement for those who continued their systematic study of Judaica in Hebrew and English.
We had practiced for several weeks to ready ourselves for our confirmation on Shavuot. That year – unusual by then for many American Jewish communities – most Atlanta synagogues held a confirmation on the first day of the Shavuot holiday.
At the time, “Me’al Pisgat Har Hatzofim” (“From the summit of Mount Scopus”), written by Avigdor Meiri in the 1920s, was the theme song of our confirmation. Together with “Hatikvah,” it was our musical link to Israel. There was hope in its lyrics that Mount Scopus (Har Hatzofim) would be in our possession once more, and we would look out from it at the wonderful landscape of Jerusalem.
What I remember vividly from the following year, 1953, was Rabbi Hyman Friedman, in charge of the confirmation, asking me to teach “Me’al Pisgat Har Hatzofim” to the new confirmands. My parents and grandparents were very proud.
Could it somehow have inspired our family’s aliyah 24 years later, in 1977?
My friends in their 80s and some in their 90s remember confirmation with great love. Whether or not they have all observed Shavuot diligently, they attended the annual confirmations on the holiday of Matan Torah (“the giving of the Torah”), no matter where they lived.
I believe that for over 100 years, confirmations in the United States were inspirational as well as educational and had an impact on American Jewish identity and its connection to Israel. (Many thanks to Ruth Weinstein for her confirmation photo!)
The writer is a retired rabbi living in Jerusalem. ■