On March 18, 1922, 12 year old Judith Kaplan, 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. This was the first bat mitzvah conducted in the United States. Judith Kaplan and her father set the stage for what is becoming a common American Jewish practice. In Jewish law, a girl reaches majority at 12, but until the commencement of the bat mitzvah there was no ritual ceremony to mark this passage.

Today, most non-Orthodox Jews celebrate a girl's Bat Mitzvah just like a boy's Bar Mitzvah. Most conservative synagogues have egalitarian participation in which women lead services and read from the Torah. Conservative Judaism is pluralistic, and a small percent of them 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 13, like the Jewish boys, rather than at the actual age 12.

The earliest American bat mitzvot were not the same as bar mitzvot. They were normally 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 rather than from the Torah scroll itself. The first recorded bat mitzvah occurred in 1931, but the ritual did not catch on right away. By the 1950’s, only one third of congregations conducted them. However, since the 1960s bat mitzvah has grown to near universal. Many modern Orthodox congregations have now adopted some form of bat mitzvah. Bat mitzvah is now an American Jewish institution.

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

The Bat Mitzvah ceremony is followed by a Bat Mitzvah celebration that can be as elaborate as a wedding reception, so you should ensure your unique Bat Mitzvah invitations are appropriate for the Bat Mitzvah celebration!

Links to our unique Bar Mitzvah invitations, affordable Bat Mitzvah announcements, cheap Bar Mitzvah cards and personalized Bar Mitzvah thank you cards.