Bar and Bat Mitzvah - Alternative Ceremonies

Alternative Ceremonies

Instead of reading from the Torah, some Humanist Jews prefer a research paper on a topic in Jewish history to mark their coming of age. Secular Jewish Sunday schools and communities—including those affiliated with the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations and the Arbeiter Ring (Workmen's Circle)—encourage the youngsters to select any topic that interests them and relates to the Jewish part of their identities.

The kibbutz movement in Israel also encouraged the celebration of the Bar Mitzvah. All those coming of age in the community for that year would take on a project and research in a topic of Jewish or Zionist interest. Today many kibbutz children are opting for a more traditional barmitzvah celebration.

Among some Jews, a man who has reached the age of 83 will customarily celebrate a second bar mitzvah, under the logic that in the Torah it says that a "normal" lifespan is 70 years, so that an 83-year-old can be considered 13 in a second lifetime. This practice has become increasingly uncommon.

As the ceremony became accepted for females as well as males, many women chose to celebrate the ceremony even though they were much older, as a way of formalizing and celebrating their place in the adult Jewish community.

A Bark Mitzvah is a pseudo-traditional observance and celebration of a dog's coming of age, as in the Jewish traditional Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah. The term has been in use since at least as early as 1997, and Bark Mitzvahs are sometimes held as an adjunct to the festival of Purim.