Evergreen

Although not associated with puberty, this rite represents a spiritual "coming of age" for adult Jews.

The bar mitzvah ceremony is medieval, but a bar mitzvah blessing appears nearly a millenium earlier.

A family educator offers words of advice to the family.

The terms

Reaching the age of majority was not always a requirement for commandments such as being called up to the Torah.

How Old is Old Enough?

Contemporary Bar/Bat Mitzvah Issues. The Bar / Bat Mitzvah Celebrarion. Jewish Coming of Age. Jewish Lifecycle

The bar mitzvah (and even more so the bat mitzvah) is a relatively new phenomena.

Age and its significance, terminology, parents' blessing, parent-child dynamics, and motivations for adult bar/bat mitzvah.

Rabbinic parables explicitly compare God to a variety of human analogues, reflecting the rabbis' subtle, complex, and diverse images of God.