Putting God on the Guest List - Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin

This book serves as an invitation to all Jewish families to link the sacred act of 'going up' to the Torah with the sacred process of 'growing up' in faithfulness to God and community. It also asks and answers such fundamental questions as: How did Bar and Bat Mitzvah originate? What is the lasting significance of the event? How to make the event more spiritually meaningful?
Parents and their children acutely feel the social pressures that surround Bar and Bat Mitzvah. But they want to feel the spiritual promise of the event the pull of the divine and the knowledge that they are participating in an event that has meaning both in the ancient past and in the very immediate present. They want to know that the steep incline before them is their family's own version of Sinai the summit where in every generation Jews meet God individually and as people. They want to know that Bar and Bat Mitzvah can be a path to that summit. And they want to know how to get there.