Bat Mitzvah began with a story.
On March 18, 1922 — two years after women got the right to vote in the US — Judith Kaplan, the eldest daughter of Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, became the first American girl to have a bat mitzvah ceremony.
Judith Kaplan, Society for the Advancement of Judaism, New York, NY, 1922. At the party back at her house that night, they served little hot dogs, Judith’s favorite food at the time.
In less than a century — the blink of an eye in the long Jewish past — roughly one million girls have followed in Judith’s footsteps.
In the 1930s, bat mitzvah sprang to life at summer camps, where informality reigned and girls were given freer rein in public worship than ever before.
Bat Mitzvah at Cejwin Camps, Port Jervis, NY, c. 1935
Bat mitzvah is now standard practice across the widest spectrum of Jewish communities, from secular to ultra-Orthodox.
At synagogues, some of the earliest girls to have a bat mitzvah had twin brothers.
Merrily and Ronald Auerbach, Temple Adath Jeshurun, Minneapolis, 1959
How did bat mitzvah evolve from a radical innovation into a universal Jewish expectation?
Rabbis’ daughters — especially when there were no sons — were among the first to be invited up to the bimah to mark their bat mitzvah.
Adena Greenberg with her father, Rabbi Sidney Greenberg, Temple Sinai, Dresher, PA, 1964
Story by story.
As girls ascended the bimah in ever increasing numbers, they not only changed Jewish worship, they expanded what the Jewish community looks like.
Noa Fay with her parents, Temple Beth Zion, Brookline, MA, May 17, 2014
In a society where gender identity is shifting, how are Jewish coming-of-age ceremonies changing?
What’s your story?
Share your story for my book on bat mitzvah and the girls who sparked a gender revolution in Jewish life.