On Saturday morning, March 18, 1922, twelve-year old Judith Kaplan, the daughter of Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, stepped to the bimah of her father’s synagogue, the Society for the Advancement of Judaism. She recited the preliminary blessing, read a portion of the Torah sidra in Hebrew and English and then intoned the closing blessing. The shocking event they had just witnessed was the first bat mitzvah conducted in the United States. Judith Kaplan and her father set the model for what has now become a widespread American Jewish practice. In Jewish law, a girl reaches majority at age 12, but until the invention of bat mitzvah there was no ritual ceremony to mark this passage.

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. Conservative Judaism is pluralistic, and a small percent of conservative synagogues are still concerned about the halakhic propriety of women reading the Torah portion in public. Many girls in the non-Orthodox movements celebrate becoming Bat Mitzvah at age 13, like the Jewish boys, rather than at the actual age 12.

The earliest American bat mitzvot were, ritually, not quite the same as bar mitzvot. They were usually held on Friday nights, when the Torah is not read or, if held on Saturday morning like Judith Kaplan’s, the bat mitzvah girl would read from a printed humash, or book containing the Bible, rather than from the Torah scroll itself. The first recorded bat mitzvah at a Reform congregation occurred in 1931, but the ritual did not catch on right away. By the 1950’s, only one third of congregations conducted them. Since the 1960s, as Reform has placed increasing emphasis on traditional rituals, bat mitzvah has grown to near universality. A number of modern Orthodox congregations have now adopted some form of bat mitzvah as well. Bat mitzvah, an innovation in 1922, is now an American Jewish institution.

The majority of Orthodox Judaism rejects the idea that a woman can publicly read from the Torah or lead prayer services, but the public celebration of a girl becoming Bat Mitzvah has made strong inway in modern Orthodox Judaism and in some elements of Haredi Judaism. In these congregations, women do not read from the Torah or lead prayer services; however Orthodox girls will lecture on a Jewish topic to mark their coming of age, learn a book of Tanakh or seder of Mishnah, recite the verses from other texts or prayers from the siddur.

The Bat Mitzvah service is followed by a reception that is sometimes as elaborate as a wedding reception, so you should ensure your personalized Bat Mitzvah invitations are appropriate for the Bat Mitzvah celebration!

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