Bat Mitzvah

A bat mitzvah is a coming of age ceremony, marked for Jewish girls at age 12 in Orthodox communities and age 13 in Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist communities. Rabbinic sources indicate that at age 12, girls become obligated in commandments and accountable for their own actions. The practice of marking this transition with a religious ceremony for girls has traces in 19th-century Jewish literature, took root in the United States with the first public bat mitzvah in 1922, and started becoming more commonplace in the 1970s.