Rabbi Carole Balin

The bat mitzvah turns 100 — a history of the female trailblazers who paved the way

Two years before my bat mitzvah, I dressed up as a bar mitzvah boy. It was the holiday of Purim, when costumed revelers celebrate biblical Esther’s derring-do. I wore a red blouse with an oversized collar tucked into chocolate brown Levi’s corduroys, a wrinkled yarmulke borrowed from my father, and a blue-striped magic-markered muslin “prayer…