Bar and Bat Mitzvah - Bat Mitzvah Customs

Bat Mitzvah Customs

Today most non-Orthodox Jews celebrate a girl's Bat Mitzvah in the same way as a boy's Bar Mitzvah. All Reform and Reconstructionist, and most Conservative synagogues have egalitarian participation, in which women read from the Torah and lead services.

The majority of Orthodox Jews reject the idea that a woman can publicly read from the Torah or lead prayer services whenever there is a minyan (quorum of 10 males) available to do so. However, the public celebration of a girl becoming Bat Mitzvah in other ways has made strong inroads into Modern Orthodox Judaism and also into some elements of Haredi Judaism. In these congregations, women do not read from the Torah or lead prayer services, but they occasionally lecture on a Jewish topic to mark their coming of age, learn a book of Tanakh, recite verses from the Book of Esther or the Book of Psalms, or say prayers from the siddur. In some Modern Orthodox circles, Bat Mitzvah girls will read from the Torah and lead prayer services in a women's tefillah. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, a prominent Orthodox posek, has ruled that Bat Mitzvah celebrations are allowable and should not be construed as imitating non-Jewish customs; however, they do not have the status of seudat mitzvah. Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef holds that it is a seudat mitzvah.

The event is celebrated by joyous festivity, the Bat Mitzvah girl delivering on this occasion a learned discourse or oration at the table before the invited guests, who offer her presents, while the rabbi or teacher gives her her blessing, accompanying it at times with an address.

There were occasional attempts to recognize a girl's coming of age in eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, the former in Warsaw (1843) and the latter in Lemberg (1902). The occasion was marked by a party without any ritual in the synagogue.

According to the archivist at the Great Synagogue in Rome, the custom of a young woman being called up in synagogue before the entire community dates back to the early years of the Roman Jewish community approximately 2,300 years ago. The community recognized her as "being of age" and acknowledged her in a public fashion. This would support more modern documents that record an Orthodox Jewish Italian rite for becoming Bat Mitzvah (which involved an "entrance into the minyan" ceremony, in which boys of thirteen and girls of twelve recited a blessing) since the mid-19th century. There were also Bat Mitzvahs held in the 19th century in Iraq. All this may have influenced the American rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, who held the first public celebration of a Bat Mitzvah in the United States, for his daughter Judith, on March 18, 1922, at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism (his synagogue) in New York City. Judith recited the preliminary blessing, read a portion of that week's Torah portion in Hebrew and English, and then intoned the closing blessing. Kaplan, who at that time claimed to be an Orthodox rabbi, joined Conservative Judaism and then became the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, influenced Jews from all branches of non-Orthodox Judaism, through his position at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. At the time, most Orthodox rabbis strongly rejected the idea of a Bat Mitzvah ceremony.