Tikvah
Subscribe
MosaicImage of Mosaic
Editor's Pick

March 4, 2022

The American Bat Mitzvah Celebrates Its Hundredth Birthday

For post-war rabbis, it was a tool for revitalization.

A century ago this month, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan—a Russian-born American Jewish thinker who founded the Reconstructionist movement—held a bat mitzvah for his daughter Judith. Menachem Wecker revisits the event, and the history of the ritual in America:

Subscribe to Continue Reading

Get the best Jewish ideas and conversations. Subscribe to Tikvah Ideas All Access for $12/month

Login or Subscribe
Save

March 4, 2022

  1. The U.S. Is Poised to Make a Nuclear Deal with Iran That Expires in Twenty Months

    How three presidents failed to do the possible.

  2. Europe Should Be Getting Its Gas from Israel and Its Neighbors, Rather Than Russia

    Yet the Biden administration scuppered a plan to make that happen.

  3. How an American Ambassador Fought Off the State Department to Make Peace between Israel and Arab Nations

    David Friedman vs. the striped-pants boys.

  4. The History of Ukraine through a Jewish Lens

    Economic flourishing, murderous anti-Semitism, and spiritual creativity.

  5. The American Bat Mitzvah Celebrates Its Hundredth Birthday

    For post-war rabbis, it was a tool for revitalization.