CHAPTER THREE - Adolescent Issues and Coming-of-Age Ceremonies

A: BACKGROUND

10. THE MATURE BAT (OR BAR) MITZVAH

Another interesting change that has happened - primarily among women, but also, to an extent, for men - is the idea of the mature Bar or Bat Mitzvah ceremony.

The idea of this is that women (and men – but there are fewer of these) who missed out on a Bat Mitzvah ceremony at the age of twelve (thirteen), because they simply did not exist in their communities, now take the opportunity to have their ceremony later in life. A growing number of non-orthodox synagogues have taken the opportunity to start an educational process for older women who were denied the chance of a Bat Mitzvah, and to culminate the experience in a fully ritualised synagogue ceremony. These ceremonies can be the source of enormously powerful emotions.

One of the drawbacks of the Bar or Bat Mitzvah ceremonies in our current western societies is the fact that the participants are frequently insufficiently mature to be able to appreciate the magnitude of the occasion in value terms. For older adults, especially women, - for whom the opportunity to celebrate Bat Mitzvah (and learn Torah) represents a major status change in their own lifetimes - a mature understanding of the ceremony's significance is clearly an integral factor in engaging in the process and the ceremony itself.