Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of b’nai mitzvah (also called bat mitzvahs for girls and bar mitzvahs for boys), Jewish coming-of-age ceremonies typically done at age 13.
B’nai Mitzvah
The Latest
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Life Digest: WSJ on Sara Hurwitz; Bat Mitzvah Girl in a Catsuit
The Sisterhood Digest: • In advance of next week’s RCA convention, at which women’s leadership is slated to be discussed,The Wall Street Journal has a piece on the maharat-rabba-back-to-maharat debate. • Rachel Lester, a 15-year-old who attends a Modern Orthodox high school, has been elected Los Angeles’ youngest-ever public representative. • The New York Post…
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The Schmooze Sex-Ed Lockdown
Remember your old Hebrew school curriculum: Jewish ethics, Jewish history, Jewish laws and customs, Talmud Studies, Jewish sex? …Jewish sex? Right, there was no Jewish sex. But this past weekend, Houston-area high schoolers had the rare opportunity to talk shop — that is, talk sex — from a Jewish perspective. The overnight retreat, “There’s Only…
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Opinion Readers Write: My ‘Generation to Generation’ Generated Respons-a
Readers sent in some illuminating responses to my pre-Passover Good Fences column about a recent family Bar Mitzvah ceremony where the rabbi included the child’s non-Jewish father in the service in what struck me as an unusually and admirably welcoming fashion. This first reply came from a rabbi in Southern California, who makes an important…
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Life Going Mormon for Modesty
I’m going Mormon. After all, I do love watching “Big Love,” and I can’t deny the appeal of having a “sister-wife” who wouldn’t mind doing the laundry for everyone in the family. But mainstream Mormons no longer practice polygamy — it’s been against official church policy for more than a century — so the “sister-wife” situation…
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Life Making My Daughters Wait — and Wait — To Get Their Ears Pierced
I read Elana Sztokman’s post about her daughter’s nose piercing with great interest, as for years now I’ve been fending off my daughters’ pleading requests to get their ears pierced. Now, I know that ear piercing is no big deal in our culture – my own ears are pierced, with three holes in my right…
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Life Do Teenage Boys Need a Room of Their Own?
It’s been clear for a while now that post-bar mitzvah age boys drop out of organized Jewish life, at least in the non-Orthodox world, far more than girls the same age do. In this article in The New York Times a few years back, I wrote about how the Reform movement had begun to address…
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Life Sex and the Bat Mitzvah Set?
I was married last week, and for our recent rehearsal dinner, my now husband and I put together a slideshow of photographs showing each of us at various stages of childhood and young adulthood. There were the obligatory bar and bat mitzvah shots. Combing through the photos of my 1992 bat mitzvah party, I got…
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Life How Should We Honor the Deceased at a Simcha?
Dear Bintel Brief: My son’s bar mitzvah is later this month, and I am so proud of him. At the event, he has expressed a desire to honor his mother, my wife, who died last year after a long illness. But he has also expressed concern that he would be injecting a dose of sadness…
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