Picture this rite of passage: The pupil is nervous. In a sudden bout of nervousness, he is crinkling his pre-printed message soon to be delivered to a large audience. His tie is askew, and he is starting to sweat; not from temperature in the room, but simply because the youngster has never addressed an audience quite like this one.
The teacher notices this from her seat in the first row, but she maintains a posture of confidence. She, too, is nervous, not for lack of preparation, but because she knows the magnitude of the event — and anything can happen in this pubic speaking forum. She will allow herself eye contact with her pupil only 50% of the time, at most.
The other 50%? Who knows.
“I’m naturally an anxious person,” she says, “though I do my best not to let that show.”
The teacher in the front row is Denver-bred Mallory Bustow, who has built a solid reputation as a B’nai Mitzvah tutor at area synagogues. At any one time Mallory juggles as many as 15 B’nai Mitzvah students simultaneously, meeting with each student for up to two hours a week.
“I think about this rite of passage that we have, becoming a Bar or Bat Mitzvah,” says Bustow. “It’s intense, you know, regardless of the exact details in different settings.
“We ask a lot of our young people.”
Bustow, 36, has a wide swath of experiences under her belt. A former Denver Jewish Day School student, she studied business at DU and is working on her master’s in Jewish education at Jewish Theological Seminary. She worked at Engineers Without Borders, which establishes water systems in African countries, and was in fundraising roles with other nonprofits.
All along her nonprofit journey, Bustow felt a tug toward teaching temple youth. She became a part-time ritual coordinator at HEA, where she celebrated her own Bat Mitzvah in 1999 and where her father, Rick Rubin, was on the board for 30 years.
About five years ago Mallory dove into the tutorial ranks at the behest of then-senior rabbi Bruce Dollin, and Bustow has devoted the majority of her time to tutoring since 2021.
“At the same time I had a fundraising job and I kind of felt, ‘I don’t think this is my path.’
“I wanted to make Jewish education my primary focus,” Bustow says.
“I made that decision, and a few weeks later HEA called to offer the ritual coordinator role.
“It’s funny how life works out.”
Since then Bustow has tutored between 40-50 students from a variety of Denver-area shuls. She recently had a student celebrating a Bar Mitzvah at Temple Emanuel, and another one at Aish of the Rockies.
“In a lot of congregations there’s at least been an option for a free market, if you will, the ability for a parent to find the tutor that fits for you,” says Bustow.
Bustow structures her B’nai Mitzvah tutoring into five “pillars,” including Torah teaching, the Haftarah, leading portions of the service, the d’var Torah (“It is important that our students show how relevant that is today”) and a mitzvah project.
Once the service starts, Bustow becomes laser-focused. As ritual coordinator, she is often on the pulpit and close to the honoree.
“A few weeks ago,” Mallory says, “the girl lost her place.
“So I was able to run up there and help her.”
Whenever she arrives at HEA to tutor a student, Bustow often passes a statue outside the glass walls near the sanctuary. The statue is of her late mother Lynn Rubin, who passed away in 2001, and was married to Rick Rubin, who was on the HEA board for 30 years.
Mallory begins to think of her own legacy as a Jewish educator and pulpit role model.
“It’s really such a privilege to be involved in this way,” says Mallory. “Especially because this all started by being asked by our senior rabbi here to do this.”
In just over 13 years, there will be a special occasion for Mallory and her husband Aaron are expecting their first child in May.
“A lot of my guiding philosophy is that this process is so emphasized, for good reason. There’s a lot of talk in my master’s program that if you focus too much on the B’nai Mitzvah, it becomes more of a bookend, because for some people there’s this big push to get to that point, and then there’s kind of a cliff, if you will, right afterward.
“The idea is to avoid that cliff.”
The rest of that conversation is for another time. For the moment, the latest new adult has sailed through the rest of the service, despite the sweaty moments.
During your next attendance at a Denver Bar or Bat Mitzvah, you might wonder about the woman who got her seat on the front row, arriving earlier than most. She’ll look calm and collected, even though on the inside she might be as nervous as the soon-to-be adult.
“That’s kind of how I roll, for better or worse,” she says.
“I think there’s a high prevalence of it in Jewish genes.”
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