There are few events in Jewish life as significant as a bar or bat mitzvah, the coming-of-age milestone often celebrated alongside a party for family and friends. And for such an important occasion, ...

The Jewish ritual of bar mitzvah. which marks a 13-year-old young man’s assumption of religious and legal obligations under Jewish law. Israel_photo_gallery, CC BY-ND It is a common scene on many a ...

A Columbus Orthodox rabbi has called for the abolition of the Bar Mitzvah ceremony in American Judaism on the premise that “nothing has contributed more to the adulteration of faith and the confusion ...

When Dennis Fries’ father was a boy, bar mitzvah to him meant no more Wednesday evenings spent in Hebrew school. Some 20 years later, the bar mitzvah ("son of the commandment" in Hebrew) has taken a ...

JERUSALEM (AP) — Liberal Jews in Israel are accusing the country’s president of discriminating against them by calling off a bar mitzvah ceremony at his residence. At the heart of the dispute is a ...

I begin by extending warm wishes to those readers currently celebrating their most solemn and important religious holidays; to Christians I wish a blessed Easter, and to Muslims a Ramadan kareem and ...

The nursing home residents celebrate a rite usually associated with adolescence. In a unique ceremony Saturday, four widows 86 to 92 years old celebrated a rite of passage traditionally associated ...

Synagogues are expanding options beyond the bat and bar mitzvah. This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to ...

As a photographer, I’m often a silent witness: to people’s personal celebrations, momentous national events, moments of stark beauty and even instances of intense strife. I don’t like to pray in the ...

March 18, 2022, marks the 100th anniversary of the first bat mitzvah ceremony in the United States. Judith Kaplan, daughter of the influential rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, became the first woman to ...

(WALTHAM, MASS.) It is a common scene on many a Saturday morning in cities and towns across the United States to see seventh- and eighth-grade boys and girls, a few not Jewish at all, gather in ...