Ohio women from 90 to 97 are finally getting their bat mitzvahs. Apparently, the ritual for girls wasn’t something with much Jewish cultural traction until the 50s and 60s when these women were already grown. Even a Southern Baptist apostate like myself knows how central the bar mitzvah is for Jewish males. Thankfully for them, these women have a rabbi who gives a damn. From the NYT:
A challenge, perhaps, but not all the women see it quite that way. “My first thought was boy, what a hoot!” said Millie Danziger Fromet, 90…A self-described “feminist all my life,” Evelyn Bonder, 90, said she “always thought girls should have the chance to participate” in something that Conservative, Orthodox, and Reform congregations embraced in stages.
Ms. Agin said: “My daughter had a bat mitzvah. But it was on a Friday instead of a Saturday. It wasn’t held inside the synagogue, and she wasn’t allowed to read from the Torah.”
…Next came the speeches, which traditionally respond to the Torah passage read in synagogue that week. Rabbi Kutner had consulted old calendars to determine the week in which each woman would have spoken at age 12. He asked them to prepare messages based on the passages they would have addressed eight decades ago.
…Class members argued intensely over whether to limit each woman’s speech to three minutes. The concern was not whether aging bladders could handle a ceremony that lasts an hour and a half, but whether relatives, some of whom are flying in from as far as Boston and California for the event, might be bored.
I’ve never been to either a bar or bat mitzvah, but I’d pay money to see this one.
