Bat Mitzvah Comes of Age

Opening Reception Wednesday, October 9, 5:30-7:30

Exhibition runs October 9, 2013 - January 26, 2014

On a Saturday morning in 1922 – just two years following the historic vote that guaranteed American women the right to vote – Judith Kaplan, daughter of Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, became the first American girl to mark her bat mitzvah during a public worship service. In the decades that followed, many other girls and women became “firsts” in their communities, helping to reshape American Judaism.

 

This October the Oregon Jewish Museum hosts the traveling exhibit, Bat Mitzvah Comes of Age. Through photographs, stories, audio clips, and much more the exhibit illustrates the determination of girls, their parents and their rabbis to challenge and change communal values and practice and institute this now widely performed Jewish ritual.

 

The Oregon Jewish Museum is expanding the exhibit to include a look into the history and tradition of the bat mitzvah in Oregon. Do you have your own stories to tell? Please contact Anne LeVant Prahl, Curator of Collections and be part of Bat Mitzvah Comes of Age!

 

Bat Mitzvah Comes of Age is a project of the National Museum of American Jewish History and Moving Traditions.

 

 

 

 

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