The introduction of bat mitzvah was a steppingstone to expanding roles for women in every part of the Jewish world. It is widely practiced in Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist communities – a branch of progressive Judaism later founded by Judith Kaplan's father – and is increasingly popular in the Orthodox world. But the bat mitzvah ritual, in varying forms, has become widespread in all movements within Judaism. Even today, bat mitzvah girls in some communities read passages from sacred texts after services on Friday night or Saturday morning, instead of during the standard Saturday morning service. Rather, she spoke after the service had formally concluded, reciting prayers and reading selections from the biblical passages out of a book. Indeed, because of controversies over whether women should be permitted to read aloud from the Torah, Judith Kaplan was not given the honor of being called up to read from a Torah scroll – part of the ordinary routine for bar mitzvah boys. It is only in recent decades that the rituals enacted and the rights bestowed for boys and girls have become substantially equivalent, and only in more liberal movements.
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For girls, meanwhile, it often marked a celebration of maturity, but did not necessarily bring along the rights to full and equal participation in synagogue rituals. For boys, it marked the moment when they took on all the privileges accorded to adult men in the tradition, including the right to be counted in a minyan, the minimum number of people required for community prayers to be honored by being called up to give blessings over the Torah reading and to read from the Torah itself. Subscribe to our monthly newsletter Growing equalityįor many years, the significance of becoming a bat or bar mitzvah was very different. Since that day in 1922, coming-of-age ceremonies for Jewish girls have gradually become more popular, especially in more liberal branches of Judaism.Īs someone who studies how legal and social changes intersect to advance the rights of women in religious communities, I see bat mitzvah as having a transformative impact on the rights of women in Jewish life, one that continues to reverberate in important ways today. Today, it typically involves months or years of study, chanting Torah in front of the congregation and giving a reflection on the week's reading. A bat mitzvah is based on the centuries-old ritual of bar mitzvah, or "son of the commandments," the ceremony for 13-year-old boys. Becoming a bat mitzvah, or "daughter of the commandments," signifies that a young woman has attained legal adulthood under Jewish law. Judith Kaplan, daughter of the influential rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, became the first woman to publicly celebrate the traditional Jewish coming-of-age ceremony.
March 18, 2022, marks the 100th anniversary of the first bat mitzvah ceremony in the United States.
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