(Published in Neshama, Winter 2002/2003, Volume 13, Number 1)

Bat Mitzvah in 1951

By Ruth Kertzer Seidman

You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.

Leviticus 19: 2.

It is May 19, 1951. The words of the Torah are being chanted on Sabbath morning. This is the day that I celebrate becoming a Bat Mitzvah. The Biblical portion for this Sabbath is Kedoshim, whose theme is holiness. The Almighty is telling the Jews that they are to be a holy people.

My path to this day was one of mindfulness; it was not a given that I should have such a ceremony. Our family lived in one of the suburban towns in Long Island, New York. My father was a rabbi in Jewish communal work, and we were members of both the Conservative and the Reform congregations in our town and attended services regularly at both. I went to Hebrew School at the Conservative congregation; after graduating from that Hebrew School I was later to go through the confirmation program at the Reform. The rabbis of both congregations were good friends of ours.

At that time, there were occasional Bat Mitzvah ceremonies at our Conservative congregation. While Bar Mitzvahs were Saturday morning, the Bat Mitzvah was at the Friday evening service. There was of course no Torah reading, but the girl did have the opportunity to chant the Haftarah, the prophetic reading. I was offered that opportunity at my congregation, but my parents and I requested that I have a Saturday morning Bat Mitzvah and read from the Torah scroll. This we were denied.

What the three of us eventually worked out was the following: The Reform congregation did not have a regular Saturday morning service unless there was a Bar Mitzvah that day. We arranged for a Shabbat service in the very lovely chapel of the Reform synagogue, led by the congregation’s rabbi and my father; I also led some parts of the service. I chanted the Maftir, the final reading from the Torah, preceded and followed by the Torah blessings, and I chanted the prophetic reading and the Haftarah blessings. I also gave a talk about the day’s Biblical portion. About 100 family members and friends formed the congregation.

My father was my teacher for the Torah and the Haftarah cantillations and the readings. In some ways this was difficult for me, as he was a person with high standards for himself and for members of his family. Yet he taught me a great deal, and gave me an appreciation for the richness of both the text and the melodies. In later years, as it became more common to hear women chanting, he often remarked that the Haftarah trop (cantillation) must have been written for a female voice, because it sounded so beautiful.

I remember being very happy that day, most importantly because my parents and I had prevailed in having the kind of ceremony that I wanted to, and also because of the family members who had traveled a distance to be there, particularly my maternal grandmother (also a strong believer in women’s rights, but that is another story). I wore a white organdy dress. Although I was a bit nervous, the task was not too difficult because on the previous day I had “performed” some of the service and the readings on Morning Chapel, the New York City television show that my father hosted every Friday. One humorous aspect was that my grandmother, my aunt, and my uncle had driven from Ontario, Canada to be with us, and had stayed over Thursday night at a motel en route. They wanted to watch my father and me on Morning Chapel, and in those days, there were not that many TV sets around. There were none in the rooms, but the family that owned the motel had one in their living quarters, so my aunt asked the owner if they could come into the living quarters to watch the show. They did, and before long the three of them were crying as they saw their little Ruthie becoming Bat Mitzvah. With this, the motel owner and his wife tactfully left the room.

In the years after the Bat Mitzvah ceremony, although I had achieved a victory in reading from the Torah scroll, as a woman in mid-twentieth century I could not participate fully in Jewish liturgical life. I continued in my belief in God and my Jewish practice, but could not continue the path started on that lovely spring day. However, over time there were changes, and many years later, as a member of an egalitarian Havurah in Brookline, Massachusetts, I re-learned my Haftarah portion. On the thirtieth anniversary, in 1981, older though not necessarily wiser, and feeling much more tremulous, I again chanted in Hebrew the poetic and optimistic words from Amos 9: 13-15:

Behold the days come, saith the Lord that the plowman shall overtake the reaper

And the treader of grapes him that soweth seed;

And the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt.

And I will turn the captivity of my people Israel

And they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them

And they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof.

…And they shall no more be plucked up out of the land that I have given them…

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Ruth Kertzer Seidman is a Reconstructionist and a feminist. In her professional life, she is an academic librarian. Ruth is currently pursuing her interest in the many facets of Jewish women’s spirituality.

ã 2002 Ruth K. Seidman