When Gavriel Kedem became a bar mitzvah, he was focused on the usual things: chanting the parsha, giving his dvar, the people watching. He wasn’t thinking about it as a historic moment. But it was — ...

Brett Smiley and David Cicilline join 11 others in a group ceremony after 18 months of study for those celebrating the rite ...

As Gabe Silverman chants his Torah portion, he's intensely focused on every word. It's the culmination of months of study and the high point of his Bar Mitzvah service. The same is true for almost ...

Jonah Wilbur, a middle school student, shares a powerful D’var Torah about the power of words. Editor’s Note: We are grateful to Jonah for sharing his D’var Torah, in which he shares about his own ...

Shelley Miller became a bat mitzvah in 1966. At the time, Jewish girls couldn’t read from the Torah — the first five books of the Hebrew bible — the way boys did during their coming-of-age ceremony, ...

The coronavirus crisis meant Jake Gordon couldn’t have the Bar-Mitzvah he was hoping for. But with the help of technology, he and his family made it a significant event anyway. As he chants his Torah ...

Who believes that the 13-year-old standing before the congregation is really a man or woman? The bar/bat mitzvah ushers a child into the responsibilities of adulthood. It is not intended to magically ...

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 ...

March 21, 2020. That’s the date of my son Leo’s Bar Mitzvah. Aside from having one of the hardest and most boring Torah portions, it seemed like a pretty good date. My wife, Jill, Leo and I had put a ...