From the time of the Bible to the time of the Talmud, the Jewish people did not celebrate the Bar Mitzvah ceremony. The Torah only mentions that one must be 20 years old to enter the army. The term “Bar Mitzvah” appears for the first time in the Talmud, in the tractate of Pirkei Avot (5:24), where it says: “At five years old a person must study the Scriptures, at ten years old the Mishnah, and at thirteen years old begin the fulfillment of the commandments, «ben shalosh esrei le mitzvoth.”

During the Talmudic period and until the beginning of the Middle Ages, minors were allowed to participate in religious ceremonies without restrictions. It was at the end of the Middle Ages that their participation in religious worship was limited. They could no longer be called to the Torah or put on tefillin. In the 16th century, in the Jewish communities of Germany and Poland, the custom of celebrating the Bar Mitzvah began. To do so, the boy had to be 13 years old to be able to put on tefillin and be called to the Torah, the two essential parts of the ceremony.

The Bar Mitzvah ceremony was also celebrated at home with a banquet and a religious speech, “drasha,” prepared by the celebrant. He would also sing the blessings, read a portion of the Torah and the Haftarah for that day. It was also established that at the end of the ceremony, the father would say the prayer: “Baruch shepatrani meionsho shel aze” (Blessed is He who freed me from being responsible for the actions of this young man).

Although the Bar Mitzvah ceremony is a significant event in the Jewish life cycle today, we see that it is only about 600 years old. The Bat Mitzvah ceremony for women is even more recent. In 1902, a Bat Mitzvah was performed by Rabbi Yechezkel Karo in Lvov, Ukraine. In the United States, the first Bat Mitzvah ceremony was that of Judith, the eldest daughter of Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, on March 18, 1922. Kaplan’s primary goal, aside from celebrating the eldest of his four daughters, was to give Jewish women the opportunity to educate themselves in Jewish matters, just as men already did. Initially, its content was developed within the framework of Conservative Judaism, in a ceremony where women did not read directly from the Torah scroll but from a volume of Chumash. Over time, the ceremony was adopted by the Reform and Reconstruction movements.

However, this was not the case with the Orthodox movement. Rabbi Moshe Fainstein and other Orthodox rabbis said: “As for those who want to celebrate a Bat Mitzvah, it cannot be done in a synagogue in any way. This ceremony is optional and even trivial. If they want, they can do it at home, although it is not equivalent to a celebration like a Bar Mitzvah.”

Even so, the Bat Mitzvah ceremony has spread throughout the Jewish world. Its celebration, along with the Bar Mitzvah, is a further step, within Judaism, towards gender equality.

By Marcos Gojman.

Bibliography: Texts by Hayyim Schauss and other sources.