The s saw a growth in bat mitzvah ceremonies triggered by a desire to bolster Jewish education for girls. By the end of the decade, one-third of Conservative congregations had instituted the rite as its visibility prodded Reform and Orthodox rabbis to consider instituting it as well. Lelyveld , to allow her to be the first bat mitzvah at Temple Israel of Omaha, Nebraska. The number of ceremonies climbed steadily in the s. More than one-half of all Conservative and more than one-third of Reform congregations implemented bat mitzvah by mid-century.
Even as bat mitzvah ceremonies proliferated, the sight of a girl on the bimah sent shockwaves through American Jewish communities.
While it would take far more girls on the bimah for bat mitzvah to reach a tipping point, rabbis of the s regarded the rite as a boon. As the ceremonies were typically relegated to Sabbath evenings, they were pleased to see a spike in attendance at Friday night services.
Rabbi R. Bat mitzvah rode s second-wave feminism to new heights. The ceremony became all but ubiquitous in Conservative and Reform congregations as female rabbis joined the girls on the bimah for the first time. For a half-century, twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls had pushed the needle of Jewish history forward. Bat mitzvah girls had normalized female presence on the bimah in a majority of synagogues, paving the way for female rabbis to take the stage. Meanwhile, more traditional communities began to mark bat mitzvah publicly, though outside regular Sabbath worship.
Some read Torah at all-women tefillah groups; others spoke before a mixed congregation after services. When it was time for me to read the haftarah, I came up to the bimah. It was extraordinary. After being denied a bat mitzvah ceremony in , Catherine Magid returned to her hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina, in and joined her mother, Lois, who had been confirmed as a teen in Wallingford, Connecticut, to prepare for the rite together.
I think we succeeded because we both got part of it right. By the end of the twentieth century, the bat mitzvah came to look identical to the bar mitzvah in all but traditional congregations, and even ultra-Orthodox Jews embraced them. Before the service, Felissa practiced holding the heavy Torah, fearing she would drop it in the moment. In the twenty-first century, with rising awareness of the spectacular diversity among Jews, those who become bat mitzvah are being acknowledged as well for bringing their unique identities and life experiences to Jewish communities across the globe.
Born and raised a Jew, Anna Drangel walked a straight path from birth to bimah to become bat mitzvah on September 22, , at the age of thirteen at the Reform Temple of Forest Hills in Queens, New York. For her mother, Gina Jones Drangel——who was baptized as a baby and came of age as a Black girl in the Catholic Church——it was hardly a foregone conclusion that she would one day become bat mitzvah like her daughter. But she did, at age 48, just months before her daughter.
With wisdom far beyond her years, Anna observed how the rite of bat mitzvah conferred a different status on her than her mother. Like the boys in her class who turned thirteen, she, too, wrapped tefillin for the first time—an embodiment, one might say, of her coming of age. She died when her twin grandchildren were just five.
Until recently, the details of bat mitzvah were hidden in scrapbooks and photo albums, in remembrances and family lore. Details have come to light in new studies , oral histories , and a national traveling museum exhibit devoted to the topic. Seemingly trivial matters add substantially to the bat mitzvah narrative.
At her bat mitzvah in Gary, Indiana, Malka Alpert Young described wearing a dress with a blue-and-white-striped top with a white skirt at the bottom. Many tell of the profound effect their bat mitzvah ceremonies had on them. As the first woman to become bat mitzvah in Rutland Vermont, Betsy Ravit Chase recalled how her mitzvah provided a sense of empowerment that has remained to this day.
However, with each successive bat mitzvah, the Jewish public became accustomed to seeing girls front and center in prayer life. That is to say, bat mitzvah girls authenticated the participation of non-boys and -men in Jewish life.
A coming-of-age ceremony is now regarded as the prerogative of every person who identifies as a Jew across the communities of North American Jewry. Unlike the Ashkenazim, the Sephardim do not restrict the rights of the minor.
The Sephardim still adhere to the talmudic law, which allowed a minor to put on tefillin and to be called up to the reading of the Torah, and they celebrate bar mitzvah in their own distinctive way.
Primarily, the Sephardim celebrate the first laying of tefillin, which takes place exactly a year before attaining majority. On that day, the parents hold a sumptuous feast for all their relatives and friends, and the boy, if capable, delivers a drasha on a topic pertaining to the occasion.
Only the rich hold a second celebration a year later, when the boy reaches his majority. Among the Jews of Morocco, too, the main emphasis in the bar mitzvah celebration is placed upon the first laying of tefillin.
This takes place on the Thursday after the 12th birthday. The feast is held at the home of the parents on the preceding day, Wednesday. The rabbi of the community binds the phylactery upon his head. A choir accompanies the ceremony with a hymn. The boy is then called up to the reading of the Torah as the third participant after the Kohen and the Levite on Thursday and Monday only a small portion of the Torah is read, for which only three are called. At the end of the services the boy delivers his discourse.
Then he proceeds with his tefillin bag among the men and the women present, and everyone throws silver coins into the bag. The boy presents this gift money to the teacher. The guests partake of a breakfast and, in the evening, they again gather in the house.
On the following Sabbath, the boy is called up to the reading of the haftarah. This is accompanied by a piyyut, a liturgical poem, composed for this occasion. However we may deplore the fact that congregational attendance at Sabbath services has come to depend on bar and bat miztvah occasions, those occasions have become indispensable for the upkeep of Jewish life.
Although Kaplan himself did not write responsa on the subject, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein and others of the Orthodox world have responded particularly to this line of reasoning, wary of its various implications:. Concerning those who wish to conduct a formal celebration for a bat mitzvah, under no circumstances is it to be held in a synagogue, which is no place for an optional function. A bat mitzvah celebration is surely optional and even trivial, and cannot be permitted in a synagogue, especially since it was instituted by Reform and Conservative Jews.
Such a party is completely forbidden issur gamur and a deviation from the ways of our fathers. Any party motivated by the purpose of making women and men equal is completely forbidden. In places where it is customary to gather her friends and family for a small meal, which bears no similarity to a festive meal. I do not find any prohibition against it. The concern over imitation of practices in other religions is factually based. This was an attempt to both lengthen the time required for Judaic study to 15 or 16 years, and to intentionally imitate practices going on in Christian religious education.
As a result, it rapidly became the case that the primary attendees at a service were often there purely for the bar or bat mitzvah event, with little or no interest in the religious aspect of the celebration.
The communal religious component was often lost in the excitement and extravagance of the celebration. Eric Yoffie commented on this phenomenon as follows:. For many Reform Jews the rite of bar mitzvah is the single most significant religious event in their lives, and we should be respectful of its impact.
Still, Judaism is a collective enterprise, not a private pursuit, and we must be troubled by the prospect that a family celebration is displacing Shabbat morning communal prayer.
Issues of celebration in the Reform world are obviously not of a halakhic nature, but reflect concern for respectability and inclusion. Differential ceremony for male and female is one which did not fit into the Reform picture, even in early years.
Kohler wrote:. Ceremonies which assign to women an inferior rank according to oriental traditional notions are out of place with us. The Conservative movement recognized the need for egalitarian inclusion of women somewhat later than the Reform, but came through with a landmark decision in that it is halakhikally permissible for women to have aliyot.
Even so, until the late s most Conservative celebrations happened as part of Friday night services, when the Torah is not read. The girl was called to the bimah, chanted haftorah and related blessings, followed by an honorary kiddush.
There are two distinct ways to approach the issue of permissibility and acceptability, that is, are we determining with or without halakhic parameters. A recognizable basic prescription is shared within the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements. This mode of celebration may be deemed acceptable and permissible by their related movements, though most rabbinic and pedagogic authorities disapprove of the lavish and excessive tone that bat mitzvah parties have taken on.
Variations of this ceremony do exist, and creative innovations have been suggested to further distinguish the female nature of this rite of passage from the male, such as a menarche ritual proposed by Judy Petsonk. Either individually or in groups, men and women studied for a period of time and then ceremonially reaffirmed their connections with Judaism at a morning service. Synagogues began to institute more formal programs of study that enabled not only women, but also men and converts, to study Jewish history, text, liturgy, and ritual, and to learn to read Hebrew and chant from the Torah and haftarah.
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