Performing Gender and Political Recognition: Israeli Reform Jewish Life-cycle Rituals

Introduction

Jewish life-cycle rituals are one of the axes around which social life has been organized. In different periods, Jews have expressed their traditions, as well as their changing forms of identity, through diverse rites of passage. In marking the birth of children, rejoicing at weddings, and mourning the dead, Jews reflect and exemplify the community’s values and norms (Goldberg 2003). These rituals affect those who join the synagogue and how they participate in the religious community, how Jewish professionals allocate their time, what Jewish supplementary schools teach, as well as the religious service into which the rite is embedded. Thus, the rituals have shaped how Jews understand and engage with Judaism (Munro 2016, 2).

Life-cycle rituals are not only an enactment of Jewish religious beliefs; they have also constructed the gender norms of the Jewish community. There are particular rituals, such as Bar Mitzvah ceremonies for boys and Bat Mitzvah ceremonies for girls, which differently mark the intersection between gender and Judaism. When Bar\Bat Mitzvah youths stand before their families, friends, and communities in a public ritual, they exemplify the core values of Judaism, uphold the family honor, and symbolically represent the Jewish future (Munro 2016, 2). Thus, gender distinctions embedded in the performance of life-cycle rituals, such as the Bat Mitzvah, traced a path that socialize youth, and thus affect the community, the Jewish family sphere, and the subject.

Throughout Jewish history, there have traditionally been fewer life-cycle rituals for females than males; the only life-cycle rituals for females were marriage and death (Joseph 2002, 234). In comparison to the Bar Mitzvah ritual, with its long pedigree going back to the late Middle Ages, not much has been written on the Bat Mitzvah. Starting in the second or third century of the Common Era, Jewish girls who reached the age of twelve had a legal responsibility to observe Jewish commandments (mitzvot). However, only centuries later, in the beginning of the 19th century, did families start celebrating a girl’s new status with some festivity. ¹

In May of 1922, the first Bat Mitzvah ceremony was performed in North America. ² In the 1950s, the Bat Mitzvah became a widespread practice in both American Reform and American Conservative Jewish congregations (Schneider 1985, 133), and was promoted as an important way to encourage girls to continue attending Hebrew schools (Stein 2001, 232). By 1960, almost all Conservative synagogues in the United States celebrated both Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, and 96% of Reform synagogues did so as well (Salkin 2005, 16). Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, from the Beth-El Zedeck congregation in Indianapolis, said: “The Bat Mitzvah is a door to self-esteem. It says that girls count, that their voices and experiences are an integral part of a sacred community” (Salkin 2005, XI).

Despite these historical precedents, the Bat Mitzvah has always been a controversial ritual, particularly among Orthodox Jews, and girls are seldom allowed to read directly from the Torah scroll (aliya la’Torah), which boys usually do as part of their Bar Mitzvahs. In some Orthodox synagogues, girls lead the service and read from either the Prophets or Writings sections of the Bible (Salkin 2005, 14–15).

This ethnographic study examines performances of the Bat Mitzvah ceremony in Israeli Reform congregations; a non-Orthodox religious community that advocates liberal modern values, such as gender equality. Since its establishment in the 19th century, the Reform Movement has implemented this vision in the organization of ritual, including dismantling the women’s section, permitting Torah reading by women, changing the text of the prayer book to omit verses that exclude women, including female appellations for God, and mentioning feminine biblical figures (Marx 2009; Matitiani 1998). I demonstrate how Reform Bat Mitzvah ceremonies, as non-Orthodox rituals, amplify gender equality and express feminine engagement with the Jewish tradition by adopting religious symbols and textual resources. This is contradictory to previous studies that were focused on Orthodox practices (Bilu 2003; Gamliel 2008; Lehmann and Siebzehner 2009).

Since the early 70s, when the Jewish feminist movement was traced, the issue of women’s positionality in the liturgy has often discussed among diverse communities. This development has always engaged with the general feminism writing and expressed dynamic movement between conservative and traditional attitude and radical reformations (Tenenbaum 1994).

According to Castelli (2001), the issue of power is an imminent principle in the intersection of gender and religion and profoundly landscape for scholar who examines religious discourses and practices. Resnick Dufour (2000) suggests to classify Jewish feminists’ identities into three particular categories (inclusionist, transformationist, and reinterpretationist). Similar to this dichotomic diagnosis, Goldstein (2009) traces this feminist tension by explaining liturgical dynamic between renewal and conservativism. The ethnographic descriptions of Reform Bat Mitzvah will present whether these ceremonies will be organized as binary categories—“Imitative ritual” or “Innovative ritual,” as Goldstein claimed.

In addition, the Reform Bat Mitzvah is not only an ideal case for examining the intersection of gender and religion. In Israel, this ritual is also a political tool for the local Reform community its struggle the Israeli Orthodox community’s religious monopoly. While the Reform Jewish movement is one of the dominant political players in the Jewish world, particularly in the United States (Kaplan 2003), the Reform community in Israel struggles for public recognition and equal rights (Cohen and Susser 2010; Tavori 2000). Unlike the Orthodox community, Reform congregations are not supported by government funds, and the rabbis have no legal authority to officiate at weddings, divorces, and funerals.

Thus, the conflict of the Orthodox against the Israeli Reform community conflict is a political issue (Tabory 2004, Ben-Lulu 2021). In Israel, a Jewish nation-state, the government supervises not only civic matters but purely religious ones as well. As a matter of fact, the religious parties’ growing political prominence and their increased control of personal status laws, education, and even the army has impressed the power of Orthodox Judaism upon both the legislation and on the consciousness of the Israeli public (Don-Yehiya 1987; Leon 2014; Liebman, Libman, and Don-Yihya 1983). Consequently, any public ritual which does not conform to Orthodox law, like the Reform Bat Mitzvah, is a challenge to Orthodox religous hegemony.

Furthermore, the Reform performance does not only contest the Orthodox conceptions but also exposes the ambivalence of Israeli Jewish secularism. The category of the “secular” is constructed by historical roots and enmeshed in national politics. The first Zionists ideologically rejected any Orthodox values and the constructed the development of the Israeli society as a modern secular company. In fact, the archetype of “the New Jew” was created during the radical change in the life of the Jewish people during the Enlightenment in Europe (Conforti 2011). However, there was not a hermetic religious detachment, Jewish symbols and narrative have been always part of the Israeli secular population (Yadgar 2011). There is no “pure” secular category in the Israeli Jewish public because while Israeli people define themselves as “seculars,” de facto, most believe in God and perform rituals and traditional customs, such as life cycle rituals. In the ethno-national space, the “Israeli secular identity,” as a local sociological category, is differently constructed compared to Western secularism, particularly toward attitudes of issues of religious belief or law (Yadgar 2010). The Israeli sociologist Uri Ram (2008) defines it as “the failure of secularism,” and emphasized the complicity of non-separation situation between state and church.

Indeed, life-cycle rituals are very common and acceptable among religious Israelis as well as secular ones (Prashizky 2006). The Reform movement realized that gender-equal life-cycle rituals are its’ entry tickets to the Israeli society. Secular Israelis usually choose the Orthodox religious rites, as that is most familiar to them. Now the Reform movement invites them to experience an alternative option, which is still connected to the Jewish tradition, but offers them a modern version of it, one which recognizes women as equal.

Thus, the promotion of the Bat Mitzvah ritual is also part of expressing the Reform Jewish marketing strategy. The Bat Mitzvah does not necessarily encompass a significant change of status for girls, as previous anthropologists have concluded (Mead [1928] 2001; Turner 1969), nor is it primarily a performance of consumer culture (Shoham 2015, 2016), but it does promote the acceptance of the Israeli Reform Jewish movement into the Israel society.

Therefore, I argue that the ceremony is an act of resistance to patriarchy and to Orthodox laws that support gender inequality. Resistance is an outcome of oppression of a social group that seeks means to fight against the situation. While some researchers insist that resistance must be intentional and be recognized by others as such (Hollander et al. 2004), Shaw suggests that “while intentionality and outcome are also important aspects of resistance, they should not be seen as defining characteristics. Intentional acts to resist may be more or less successful, and successful resistance may occur without prior intent” (2001, 186). Through its analysis of the social dynamics of the Jewish-Israeli context, this article will demonstrate how rites of passage rituals may indeed serve as acts of resistance.

I will first discuss life-cycle rituals, particularly those in which gender and religion intersect, and discuss the evolution of the Bat Mitzvah. Then, I will present the field and the selected research methods. The ethnographic findings are divided into three dimensions: textual, cultural-material objects, and geo-political space. Lastly, I will discuss how examining Reform Bat Mitzvah rituals allows us to interpret Jewish and gender politics in Israel, and what, on the macro level, it contributes to the understanding of the place of religious communities in construction of gender and religious politics.

Evaluating the Bat Mitzvah: Cultural-Gender Lens on a Contemporary Life-Cycle Ritual

Anthropologists are, and were, always curious about rituals, and believe that it provides an optic for understanding communities’ values and perceptions. Rituals, such as holy days or life-cycle ones, reflect the relationship between the individual and the community. Westman (2011) emphasizes the importance of rituals in creation of social dynamics and in expressing diverse cultural changes and challenges. Ritual activity constitutes an important means with which people channel their emotions and express their sense of belonging (Kertzer 1988) and thus it is closely related to political power (Westman 2011). The socio-cultural context is not a neutral frame, but an influential pattern that exposes the ritual as a political act of motivations, conflicts, and resistance. The ritual is a catalyst to develop a communal solidarity and consolidate sense of particularism and recognition. For example, Collins (2009), in his work on the Quaker religious community, ³ shows key element in the dynamic of transmission and reproduction of religious rituals. The liturgy, which is based on the meaning of the collective gathering rather than personalistic leadership, includes reading sacred texts, delivering homiletical sermons. Collins’ research demonstrates the importance of studying Quakerism at the local level, rather than as an institutional whole, that it is more useful to study the worship group than Quakerism overall. Therefore, the ethnographer’s role becomes so important to discover the emic view, namely, to describe the field’s interpretation and do not necessarily referring to familiar paradigms (Collins 2005).

Anthropological researchers call attention to the personal dimension of life-cycle rituals and to the individual’s own experience of the human life cycle. These rituals elaborate family roles, boundaries, and rules, contributing to a religious identity and its sense of itself over time. Choices regarding who participates in the planning and execution of a life-cycle ritual reflect family and community relationship patterns (Imber-Black 1999, 214; Myerhoff 1982).

Indeed, life-cycle rituals involve the dramatic and exaggerated performance of some activity characteristic of the adults of the community which serves as the young person’s entrance ticket into that community. Through the 20th century, anthropologists emphasized the importance of these particular rites. According to Arnold van Gennep (1960, 1–14), the ceremonial acts (rites) practiced in traditional societies occur around universal transition events, such as birth, initiation into adulthood, and marriage. His framework is marked by three sequential stages: the pre-liminal or preparatory stage, the liminal, and the post liminal or stage of re-incorporation.

Also, the American anthropologist Victor Turner, argued that life-cycle rituals are antithetical to existing social structure and “subjunctive,” because they invite new possibilities. Rites enable participants to experiment with alternative social relations or to invent new ones. A second role of these rituals, according to Turner, is that they direct the attention of a society’s members to their community. He understood ritual and social structure to stand in a dialectical relationship (Turner 1969). He defines a “ritual” as “prescribed formal behavior for occasions not given over to technological routine, having reference to beliefs in mystical beings or powers” (ibid 1967, 19).

In Turner’s report on the Nkang’a ritual, a Ndembu rite of passage for girls, carrying them into womanhood, he emphasized the category of “obligation” in the ritual’s meaning, the obligation to venerate the ancestral shades. Thus, these rituals are performed because persons or the corporate group have failed to meet this obligation. The curative rites have as one social function that of “causing them to remember” the shades, who are structural nodes of a locally residing matrilineages (ibid 1969, 12–13).

In contrast to the aforementioned arguments, which focused on status change, contemporary life-cycle practices challenge the traditional ritual’s structure and goals. Particularly since the 20th century, social categories, such as age, race, gender, and class, have been creatively expressed and reconstructed through political acts. Today, life-cycle patterns are conducted differently compared to their traditional framework in expressing cultural, gender, and religious politics and identities.

For example, Bocock (1974), who explored industrial societies, pointed to a secularization of religious rituals, such as baptisms, weddings, and funerals, and emphasized the importance of time and space in exploration of rituals. Not only has transformation of traditional life-cycles become a common phenomenon, but so has the creation of new ones. Pleck (2000) argued that the birthday party has become an almost obligatory life-cycle ritual in modern industrial culture, amalgamated with the individualism of consumer culture. Thus, contemporary life-cycle rituals have dynamically become socially essential products for personal needs.

Therefore, religious celebration among family and friends is not a luxury in a world of increasing fragmentation and mobility, and the need for moments of binding is critical to communal connectedness (Salkin 2005, X). Markowitz (2001, 123), who explored Soviet-American Bar and Bat Mitzvah ceremonies, showed how a close look at the rituals reveals much about affiliation issues with the local American Jewish communities. According to her ethnographic research, Soviet Jews were not allowed to practice religious rituals under the communist regime; consequently, they immigrated to the States without religious capital. She claimed that these rituals emphasize the retention of Judaism in the face of the acculturation and acceptance by American society of secular ethnicity would only be a painful reminder that they, lacking Judaic knowledge, are not in fact “Jewish enough” (2001, 131). Following Markowitz, this study shows how the Reform Bat Mitzvah is also considered as alternative means to achieve religious capital. The performance of Reform ritual, particularly in Israel, is a political performance that demonstrates the social exclusion of a minor group in Israeli society.

In contemporary Jewish life, the ceremonies around Bar and Bat Mitzvah have served as an important means of drawing the younger generation into the Jewish community, rather than as ceremonies that signify the traditional meaning of taking upon oneself the obligation of observing the commandments of the Torah (Bacon 2008, 146). Bacon (2008), who analyzed curricula for the Bat/Bar Mitzvah year of Israeli schools, emphasizes the necessity of developing a curriculum that deals with Jewish and gender identity in accordance with the needs of the local community. Her research illuminates the tension between hegemonic messages and alternative messages which were associated with excluded religious groups. Grussgott (1998) concluded that Bat Mitzvah ceremony can develop girls’ gender and social understanding of sexuality, embodiment, and gender—typical adolescent matters.

In addition, Shoham claims that the Bat Mitzvah is an extreme example of the consumer culture’s impact on Jewish life (Shoham 2015, 277). ⁴ The blossoming of the modern Bar and Bat Mitzvah, which, since the mid-twentieth century, have been basically transformed into a birthday extravaganza that spotlights the celebrant, along with the presents and fancy clothing—while the religious initiation has been shunted to the margins (Shoham 2016, 2).

In response to that, today, many circles, especially the Jewish Renewal movement in Israel and the liberal wing of Orthodoxy, have called for changing the Bat Mitzvah from a fancier birthday party into an authentic initiation ritual. There is, indeed, a small but important trend to make the Bat Mitzvah more than a birthday party. This call, perhaps, is clearly outside the mainstream, which today has equalized, at least formally, the celebrations for boys and girls but has never imagined giving them a similar content (Shoham 2016, 14).

For instance, according to Feferman (2018, 27), every year about 2,000 Bat Mitzvah ceremonies are performed in Israeli Reform congregations, and 1,200 in Conservative congregations. Most of the families are not official community members, and they pay for this religious service. Earlier statistical findings showed that only half (49%) of the 83% who attach importance to a Bat Mitzvah ceremony, do so for religious reasons (Arian and Keissar-Sugarmen 2009, 42). Expounding on these percentages, the following ethnography will introduce the diverse literature which sheds light on gender and political perspectives in the Reform Israeli community.

Methodology

This study is based on a fieldwork conducted in two Israeli Reform congregations between 2014 and 2017, Ha’Lev Congregation and Yuval Congregation. Ha’Lev Congregation is located in Tel-Aviv and was established in 2010 by local residents who were interested in an equal and pluralistic Jewish congregation. Today the congregation includes 30 to 40 official members. During the fieldwork, the congregation was led by Rabbi Efrat Rotem, a queer lesbian woman. She was born in Israel and known as a popular activist in the Israeli LGBTQ community (Ben-Lulu 2017, 8). Every week the congregants gather to observe Shabbat services in a rented room at a local community center. Bat Mitzvah ceremonies are uncommon rituals on the congregation’s schedule, but they do take place upon a member’s request.

Yuval Congregation was established in 2009 and is located in the town of Gedera in the central district of Israel. This congregation includes about 40 official members, most of whom are young parents and native Israelis who did not grow up in religious families. In addition to religious rites, this congregation supplies diverse family activities, such as outdoor trips, study classes, youth movements, and special workshops for boys and girls and their parents to prepare for Bar\Bat Mitzvah rituals. Similar to Ha’Lev congregation, this congregation was led by a female leader, Rabbi Mira Chovav. She was born in Israel and her leadership attitude expressed a deep connection between Israeli national and folk characters and the traditional Jewish resources.

Since the Yuval Congregation’s establishment, it has been dealing with the local municipality restrictions. None of the Reform congregations in Israel are recognized as official religious groups in the public space, and in the case of the Yuval Congregation, most of the rituals are not conducted at a permanent prayer house that hosts the community activities. The members of the Yuval Congregation rent a room in one of the local elementary schools instead of praying in a traditionally appropriate synagogue as is afforded the Orthodox community. Consequently, some of the rituals, such as Bar\Bat Mitzvah, are performed in different public places, hosted by other Reform Congregations, or sometimes even take place in the congregant’s private home. The Yuval Congregation’s particular local conflict for municipal recognition it is a quintessential example of the Israeli Reform movement’s struggle.

The primary method of data collection in this study was the classic anthropological method of participant observation. I considered this method as the most efficient one for analyzing the practices being examined as they are conducted in ritual space and time. I observed 10 ceremonies, and also conducted 20 semi-structured in-depth interviews in the second and third years of the study. ⁵ During the participation I fluidly observed and participated; I sang and prayed, but most of the time, I examined how the ceremony was conducted, the dynamic between the rabbi and the Bat Mitzvah girl and her family, and the cooperation of the participants. Sometimes, after the ceremonies were done, I asked the mothers some questions about the ceremony, their feelings, and first “autunitic” impressions. While most of the formal interviews were conducted several weeks or months later, it was important to stay close to the ritual moment, as it contributed to my understanding of the category of time in the experiences.

The interviews were conducted with the girls’ mothers and not with the girls themselves, due to ethical restrictions. However, including the mothers’ voices theoretically enriched my understanding regarding motherhood and feminisms. Also, the exclusion of the fathers’ voices is based on the feminist qualitative methodology which moves absent feminine voices to the front of the research stage (Ramazanoglu and Holland 2002). In addition, I conducted several interviews with the congregations’ rabbis; some of their references are also included in the following description. The ethnographic descriptions also contain informal conversations.

The purpose of these interviews was to fill the gaps, those missing pieces of information hidden from the ethnographer during the observation, and to clarify their experiences and their influence on the rituals’ structure. During the interviews, I tried to extract the meaning attributed to the Reform congregation and practice while focusing on its gender contexts and explaining the feminine gestures and the dynamics between the members of the congregation and the rabbi. Their varied references helped me to analyze the tension between what the individuals declare they do on the one hand, and what they actually do on the other hand.

Moreover, when I asked to observe in particular mother-daughter workshops conducted at Yuval Congregation, Rabbi Chovav expressed that “it’s not appropriate.” She preferred to make this activity clear of masculine presence, and of course, I respected her request and conducted my observations only at the Bat Mitzvah ceremonies. In addition, as a Jewish Israeli male, who had the privilege to celebrate an Orthodox Bar Mitzvah, I tried to be aware as much as possible of moments of intuitive judgment, comparisons, or criticisms of the ceremonies. In some ceremonies, some flashbacks and memories came to my mind, and I noticed how different these rituals were from my own experience. This reflexive positionality strengthened my wariness of taking a moralistic, ethnocentric, and judgmental stance.

Textual Engagement with the Torah

A Reform Bat Mitzvah ritual includes Torah reading (aliyah), reciting of new blessings and prayers (contains feminine language, metaphors, and mentioning of women biblical figures), and a homiletical sermon based on the weekly Torah portion which is delivered by the girl (Dvar Torah). Women reading from the Torah is a controversial act among Orthodox Jews and is considered a profanation (Isaacs 2006; Sperber 2002). From the Orthodox point of view, Jewish law (halakhah) cannot endure the sort of egalitarian practice ⁶ that is commonplace in the Conservative and Reform movements since the last century. Women reading the Torah is apparently so foreign to received halakhic axioms that any deviation from it is regarded as a desecration (Shapiro 2001, 2).

In Reform Jewish community, this patriarchal prohibition has become irrelevant. Michal, a girl from the Yuval congregation, held her Bat Mitzvah at the location of a different Reform congregation. After several months of the Bat Mitzvah workshop, she felt ready for the moment. Before reading the Torah, Michal smiled and said to her guests:

It wasn’t an easy mission to know how to read and remember all the vocal signs. It’s something that you don’t study in Bible class at school. When I practice at home, my big brother, who read the Torah in his Bar Mitzvah, laughed at me, but in the end, he helped me. It motivated me to not stop my practice.

Four months later, when I requested that Keren, Michal’s mother, summarize this busy period of preparation, she excitedly described it:

I felt helplessness because I couldn’t help her. It’s not just another homework assignment. At first, she was embarrassed, but she did it. I am proud of her. I didn’t celebrate Bat Mitzvah for myself, and I don’t know how to read the Torah. So, she did it also for me. I didn’t have the option, while she has one. So, when Rabbi Chovav invited me to keri’at ha-Torah (reading of the Torah as part of the prayer service), I was so excited and felt like I closed the circle.

Michal’s embarrassment and her mother’s lack of religious capital are more than private responses; rather, they express Jewish women’s historical exclusion from the liturgy. Michal’s brother is proof that boys have enjoyed more religious life-cycle rituals than girls, who were, and are, positioned out of the Jewish experience. Another example is demonstrated by Keren’s reference. Now, thanks to her daughter’s performance, she won the opportunity to celebrate a late Bat Mitzvah that she had never had. Michal represents the new generation’s privilege to break the historical gender wall and fulfill gender equality in the Jewish life-circle (Grant 2003, 2007; Klingenstein 1995).

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Picture Credit: Ronen Mossinson.

In addition to Torah reading, the homiletical sermon is known as an exciting moment when the girl shares with her knowledge and creative interpretation. Sigal, from the Yuval Congregation, encouraged her daughter, Yonit, to adapt the biblical narrative to her personal life story. However, she noticed that, for her daughter, the Reform Bat Mitzvah was not such a “big deal:”

During the communal Bat Mitzvah workshop, my daughter was exposed to different Jewish texts, so she was really ready when she began to think about her Dvar Torah. It was important for her to supply feminist interpretations and include a girl’s adolescence discourse and contextually connect these issues to her weekly Torah portion (Parashah). Also, she shared educational challenges which she dealt with and really tried to think about how to take it to her daily life. For example, she emphasized the status of the biblical women and how much they teach us about gender empowerment. In fact, when we first discussed the subjects and the content, I noticed how deep the “gender” gap was between us. For her, it was a given that she would read from the Torah and deliver a sermon. I asked her to think less radically because for me the Reform concept is still controversial. When I was a child, I never imagined that women would be allowed to read from the Torah. Like in the past, even today, I know that in Israel “Reform” is still a curse. I was worried that my daughter might be bullied.

Indeed, the decision to perform the Reform ritual is not complete, and the feminist vision cannot really erase local Jewish politics. For the most part, Reform Jews are still considered queers and sinners in Israel and she recognized Reform’s marginality. On the one hand, Sigal was proud of her daughter’s creativity and supported the Bat Mitzvah process; on the other hand, Sigal discovered how religious and gender norms are dynamic social constructions.

Creative ritualism was performed not only by textual sermons but also by a prayer text. Neta, another girl from the Yuval congregation who celebrated a Bat Mitzvah held the ceremony in a location of one of the Reform congregations that is close to Gedera. Tami, her mother, decided to create a new prayer book that was decorated with Neta’s paintings and included biblical verses and songs which were chosen by her daughter. In the beginning of the ceremony she said to her guests:

As all of you know, Neta loves to paint and draw as she has an artistic view of the world. So, we decided to create a new Siddur (prayer book), particularly for this performance, which includes some paintings and quotes from Israeli popular songs, instead of providing you with traditional prayers, which nobody here really knows. So, please sing with us.

In the end of the event, after a tasty dessert, I asked her about the decision to leave the Reform prayer book out of the ritual’s structure. She responded:

We are a secular family, and in the beginning, it was important for us to be together at the ritual and to respect gender equality values. The Reform congregation is just a tool so that men and women can celebrate together. So, we thought deeply about how our guests could best be involved in the ceremony. Neta’s artistic skills and her musical choices made the siddur more personal, Israeli, and modern. It doesn’t compare to a boring traditional Bar Mitzvah which uses the same texts every time. It’s Bat Mitzvah, not Bar Mitzvah, so you have a free spirit. No clear rules. I love it. I think that as a woman, we have the chance, here in the Reform format, to create a new ritual which is appropriate to our visions and wishes. It’s not should be a “copy-paste” from the “Bar” model.

Tami believes that visual and musical artistic aspects are benefits for supplying personal and social atmosphere to the ceremony (Elias 2005). She emphasized that participant involvement is a crucial factor that constructed her decision. The goal was to make the Reform performance more familiar for the participants by including popular folk characteristics which they already knew and to connect them to Neta by including her paintings. Audience involvement is a dominant aspect of the performance’s existence and confirmation (Schechner 2004). She legitimized the dynamic of the traditional practice based on gender identity, compared to a Bar Mitzvah which is expected to follow tradition to the letter. Through her decisions, she contributes to the process of “engendering Judaism,” as the feminist theologist Rachel Adler put it, which traces how women’s full inclusion can and must transform our understanding and practice of Jewish liturgy and practices (Adler 1998).

In addition, the clear declaration that “we are a secular family” demonstrates that there is no clear boundary between personal religious identity and religious practice. Conducting a Reform Bat Mitzvah did not identify them as Reform Jews. The family’s egalitarian agenda, especially gender equality value, motivated them to choose the Reform congregation as a suitable space for Neta’s Bat Mitzvah.

Traditionally, at Yuval Congregation, one of the repetitive customs which is commonly performed in the ritual is “the mother’s blessing.” The feminine participants were welcomed to the front of the stage with their text of prayers for the blessing of the girl using a traditional verse dedicated to the biblical figure Rivka: “Thou [art] our sister; become thou thousands of myriads, and thy seed doth possess the gate of those hating it” (Genesis 24, 60). According to Rabbi Chovav, who promotes this custom, this is one of the most exciting moments in the ritual, connecting familiar biblical figures to the women’s family members from different generations who bless the Bat Mitzvah. “The Siddur is not a closed text,” she claims, “It’s a dynamic and open space for new creation of feminine Jewish liturgy”:

We use the Torah and our Jewish treasure texts which were collected throughout history and make them relevant, vivid, and egalitarian. In my congregation, the women know that they can find themselves in the text by identification of biblical feminine figures, feminine language, and special prayer. Indeed, the Reform Bat Mitzvah, particularly the Aliya, could be perceived as a feminist or feminine moment, but I don’t need a definition for something that it so obvious. We shouldn’t declare or define it as a feminist performance; we are women, and we are “doing” feminism every week in our services, so we should refer to it as natural (especially in Israel), more than to frame or to remind someone “we are feminists.” It’s not a one-time ritual—almost every month I have some brave girls on my schedule. In the end, people will deal with that.

Her explanation emphasized how gender has been positioned as an essential issue, creating the dynamic process of evaluating Jewish traditions. Despite her feminist agenda, she detached the identity category from the practice. She did not use the term “feminist” because according to her perception, she is “doing feminism” more than declaring it. This statement demonstrates that we should think about feminism as something that women do (Avishai 2008, 428). Moreover, the term “feminist” has become fluid and multi-voiced for describing the thoughts and actions of women in different times and places (Burton 1992, 30). Rabbi Chovav lives gender equality and performing gender equality regularly. Her avoidance of feminist labels is a manifestation that gender identity is continuously formed by gendered acts, more than political declarations or stable identities.

Feminine Tallit: “Show Me Your Appearance, Let Me Hear Your Voice”

The ritual performance did not consist only of creative textual deconstructions and interpretations but also included using material objects, such as a tallit (prayer shawl), which has been traditionally considered a masculine garment. In the last century, various kinds of feminine tallit have been used, commonly in liberal egalitarianism Jewish communities. Focusing on this cultural-material object illuminates the dialogue between tradition and gender politics in the contemporary Jewish liturgy (Nudell 2016, 66).

Shani, from the Ha’Lev Congregation, remembered that when her daughter told her that she would like to be wrapped with a tallit at her Bat Mitzvah, Shani convinced her to make a more “appropriate” choice and to think about a different pattern of tallit, “different from the regular,” in other words, the masculine one:

First, I was so proud that my daughter Gili wanted to use a tallit at the ceremony. She told me “Mom . . . if I am observing the ritual, I wish to do it completely as it should be.” Honestly, I was surprised because we are not a religious family, so, I asked her why since I was afraid that her friends would see it as odd.. . . She said, “if boys do that, why wouldn’t girls?” I was so proud of her. She is a young girl, and she isn’t familiar with feminist theory . . . she goes to a regular school and learns math and science, not gender studies. She just wanted to normalize the ceremony. I just suggested to choose a different color. The black or the blue lines are boring and regular . . . so finally we bought a purple tallit. I was very happy that she had something more appropriate for her, and she loved it. It is sewn with very high quality, and we also got a kippa (skullcap), but she didn’t want to use it. She said it was “too much.”

In her statement, Shani emphasizes the importance of the material symbol’s presence at the ceremony (Hazard 2013, 58). Although the tallit might be recognized among the hosts as a masculine symbol, she respected her daughter’s decision to present an authentic religious performance. Indeed, Gili knew that being wrapped with a sacred object as the tallit is accepted in her congregation while she chose to change the tallit’s pattern and color in order to make the performance more feminine. The purple tallit preserved the binary distinction between gendered colors as blue and black colors are considered masculine and pink or red are feminine. Furthermore, refusing to use a skullcap during the ritual, which would also be considered a masculine performance, demonstrates not only an autonomic free choice but also the hierarchy of masculine religious objects with the skullcap being seen as “more masculine” than the tallit. Gili’s decision, moreover, reflects the power of the Orthodox performance to represent and reinforce traditional gender roles.

Not only did the visual pattern make the tallit more acceptable as a feminine object but the blessing which appeared on it did also. Dana, Ha’Lev congregant, said that the color and the size were not issues for her daughter. Rabbi Rotem stood in front of the participants and explained the meaning of the gendered biblical verse from “Song of Solomon,” which was embroidered on the tallit:

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Picture Credit: Noa Weiss.

As you can see here, the tallit, which was created by Rina (one of the women congregants), includes a biblical quote for gender empowerment: “Show me your appearance, let me hear your voice, for your voice is pleasant and your appearance is comely” (2:14). This verse is attributed by feminist voices for advocating feminine participation in Jewish liturgy and community life. It is so fitting for our lovely Shai who has a beautiful voice and appearance. The Song of Songs, which is known as one of the most poetic and romantic Jewish writings, exposes a pure love between man and woman—metaphors of the relationship between God and us. Look how empowering it is to show love without fear or exclusion. The recognition of a woman’s voice and her visual presence is more than a symbolic message—it must be a way of life. We often hear how Orthodox calls try to silence women’s voices or destroy feminine images in the public sphere. Here, today, this is a Jewish rejection of these mute experiences. We say all together “No More!”

Then, she closed her eyes, put her hands-on Shai’s shoulders, wrapped her with the tallit, and blessed her. At the end of the ceremony, I asked Dana about this exciting moment. She said:

The power of words can change the world. The combination of the tallit, the text, and the composition which was heard was a magical moment. When you see a woman rabbi and a young girl together on the stage, you understand how the words have been performed into reality. It was such a personal and intimate moment compared to a Bar Mitzvah.

These descriptions show how the material object was feminized by the biblical text. The poetic verse was transformed from the written text to the performative material object. In the past, women were in charge of the preparations of the religious objects for the ritual itself. For example, they weaved the Parokhet (the Jerusalem Temple vail), and through this craft, they took part in the Temple’s service (Marx 2015b). As this case demonstrates, not only religious or spiritual motivations cause the creation of religious object, but also social ones. Rina’s generous choice to create the tallit by herself reflects a close relationship between the women of the congregation, a sense of sisterhood, and not an attempt to express her religiosity.

The tallit’s invisibility positions the object as a liminal object, a political conflict’s agent for gender redemption (Hoskins 2007, 115). Milligan (2013) shows how religious objects reflect not only religious identity but also gender-sexual identities. We see this in the aforementioned case when the tallit connects the individual to other women in the congregations, such as the congregant chosen to create a tallit for Shai.

In addition, the fact that a female rabbi led the ritual exposes the mother and her daughter to relevant feminine views and new creative political and religious interpretations. Rabbi Rotem reclaimed the sacred text not only for empowering the young girl but also as a political criticism of gender exclusion in Israel. Rabbi Rotem explained this to me in our interview:

The Reform Bat Mitzvah is a feminist rite of passage. The girl is an important actor presenting different alternative ways to celebrate gender and tradition based on pluralistic and liberal values which, unfortunately, are considered to some in Israel to be a strange desecration. I always think of how to encourage the girl’s and her family’s expectations of my agenda—creating a feminine Jewish ritual. The girl is positioned in the center of the ritual because it’s her moment. I don’t look for familiar analogies to a Bar Mitzvah because she’s not a boy. She’s a girl. These girls are the liberal Judaism’s ambassadors. In one of the ceremonies, a nice guy approached me and said: “You made a change in the tradition.” I responded, “I do not make a change—this is the tradition as it is. It is always in movement.”

Rabbi Rotem sees the ritual as a political act constructing and reflecting Jewish feminist ideology and the Reform alternative. She rejected adopting any masculine tools or frame in the process of recognition and gender redemption. In contrast to liberal feminists, she promoted a feminine corpus and religious structure without similarity to masculine religiosity and particularly focused on women’s oppression (Rowland and Klein 1996). Rabbi Rotem’s mission is to negotiate between the past and the present and formulate tradition as a dynamic production in the current reality for identity politics; as Sagi and Sagi claim, “tradition is a constitutive of self-identity, the web of socio-cultural contexts conditioning our identity” (Sagi and Sagi 2008, 8).In contrast to the previous feminist supportive statements, not all of the girls felt totally comfortable with the tallit. In fact, some of them preferred to avoid that performance. For instance, Haya from the Yuval Congregation said that her daughter, Shirly, decided to read the Torah without the tallit. “She is not a boy,” Haya declared:

When I discussed it with my daughter, she affirmed my beliefs. We agreed that the tallit is still associated with masculinity, so it’s fine; it wasn’t missing at her Bat Mitzvah. Moreover, I felt a kind of relief. I wasn’t asked to justify to others why we were using the tallit and to explain all this feminist story.

➢ I understand. Nevertheless, she read the Torah, didn’t she? Wasn’t it a feminist “story,” as you stated? It’s not a common custom among Israeli girls.

Haya: Yes, but reading the Torah is different. It’s not like the image of a girl with a tallit. It’s just reading. The people hear the verses, but they don’t see my girl wrapped in a tallit. Reading is not a provocation compare to wrapping; you know, not everyone is “Reform.”

In her explanation, Haya argued that the tallit is not a necessary or beneficial object for the ceremony, rather, it might be a real obstacle to the ritual’s success. Her daughter did not wrap herself in a tallit, and for her, it was made sense. She was sure that foregoing the tallit would make the ritual more acceptable for people who weren’t familiar with the image of a woman with a tallit. On the micro level, this explanation shows how halakhic and patriarchal views are intuitively adopted by Israeli women; on the macro level, it is an expression against the liberal feminist view which is based on the value of total equality rather than radical alternatives. Indeed, the final decision aligned with the girl’s wishes, but it also exposed how patriarchal and Orthodox Jewish norms are dominant among Israeli society, particularly in religious practices. Reform rituals are usually perceived as “provocative,” as she claimed.

In addition, this performance demonstrates that sacredness is symbolically experienced through visual and decorative objects and not enough phenomenological feelings. However, the decision to read the Torah without being covered (with a tallit) flouted the traditional commandment. Her rejection challenges traditional religious commandments, such as covering with a tallit during the time of reading the Torah.

Gender, Space, and Resistance: “Lady, Choose Your Wall”

Neither the Yuval nor the Ha’Lev congregations perform the communal rituals in formal synagogues since the Israeli government does not subsidize the Reform Jewish community’s services. Consequently, the place in which ceremonies are held has become a main issue for the existence of the ritual. It is not only a logistical matter, but it also exposes political and social conditions and capacities, as Nicholls argues, “just as there is no singular type of place, there is no singular type of space as its constitution depends on the articulation of particular activities in various places” (2009, 81). In other words, a space is not important in and of itself as much as it is given its meaning based on the activities that take place in the space.

The socio-political marginal positionality of the Israeli Reform community is a catalyst for creative ideas for celebrating the ceremony. Liron, from the Yuval Congregation, said that her daughter, as a “nature-girl,” wished to conduct the ritual in nature, surrounded by green trees and a pastoral view, so they tried to connect the space to a feminine spiritual context:

Ironically, the fact that we don’t pray in a shul (synagogue) and that we don’t have the facilities to conduct the Bat Mitzvah caused us to think outside of the box, to be creative. My daughter participates in the Green Horizons (educational outdoor activities for Israeli youth), and she loves nature, so it was nice that we found a place to conduct the ceremony in the outdoors. It also gave us the chance to connect her Dvar Torah to ecology, such as global warming, and to gender topics. My daughter’s Bat Mitzvah was held before Yom Kippur, so she recited “Hayom Harat Olam” (“Today is the birth day of creation”)—The world is symbolized as a womb, or in other words, a reference to “Mother Earth.”

The political obstacle of no sacred space afforded for the Bat Mitzvah was revealed as an advantage to re-frame the ceremony and ultimately reflects the girl’s values and interests. The space was infused with gender meanings which were contextualized to biblical metaphors. In addition, this choice characterized the role of the contemporary life-cycle rituals which are not only an act of worshipping God or expressing faith but also for individual fulfillment.

In contrast to the previous experience, Malka, from the Yuval Congregation, said that the question of political exclusion become a serious issue because they preferred to conduct the Bat Mitzvah in their intimate congregation and not at a foreign place. However, there is no Holy Ark at the Yuval Congregation’s space and there were not enough chairs for all of the family members and friends. Therefore, they decided to conduct it at one of the biggest and most popular Reform congregations in Tel-Aviv. Malka sees the space and the religious decorations as cultural-material agents to strengthen the sacred moment:

When I lived in Tel-Aviv, I always prayed there. My daughter wanted to invite her friends to a normal synagogue that included an ark and all the religious sacred elements and not to the elementary school (where we usually conduct our communal services in the Yuval Congregation). She wanted to feel the holy atmosphere, the Jewish spirit which you can get only at a synagogue and not in the middle of a school. My daughter is the first girl among her friends who read the Torah, so it was so important to her to show her friends that Reform Jews pray also in a synagogue and that it is not so different from the Orthodox version that they already knew, except the mix-gender seating. Thus, the place was an issue. It is positioned us as regular Jews.

The space, including the sacred objects and securing an appropriate space, is significant and political; specifically, it affords public recognition of Reform Judaism in Israeli society through the celebration of egalitarian Jewish practices. However, terms such as “normal” and “regular” preserve Orthodox Jewry as the “authentic” authority. These expressions raise doubt about what is real and not real and revealed Malka’s tendency to adopt the Orthodox setting for achieving a social consensus that would confirm the Reform Bat Mitzvah as a “Kosher” performance.

Furthermore, the decision of where to place the ritual is not only a functional choice but also a symbolic one that demonstrates the political issues regarding the public sacred space and religious ownership of the public space. Bella’s daughter, from the Yuval Congregation, wished to celebrate her ceremony at the Western Wall, Jerusalem, where every day hundreds of young boys celebrate their Bar Mitzvah in the male zone. It is neither a regular site nor an acceptable act for women to pray at the Western Wall because of the Orthodox obligation and the gendered separation. For Bella, it was important to keep the family all together during the ritual, so they conducted it in Robinson’s Arch, the egalitarian prayer plaza at the foundation of the Western Wall. This decision raised a chauvinistic response:

We wanted to conduct the rite at the Western Wall. When I told that to one of my colleagues, he said “Lady, choose your wall.” I was shaken; it was such a rude response. If my daughter wants to have her Bat Mitzvah at one of most sacred places for Jews, she will do it there like every boy. Finally, we did it at Robinson’s Arch, we touched the wall as our guests looked on and were excited with us. It was such an important moment, not only for us as a family but also for me as a woman and a mother who wishes to promise my daughter to live here as an equal citizen and a free woman. Of course, we would have preferred to pray together at the real Kotel (Western Wall), but it was better than nothing. I hope that one day we will have the opportunity to pray there as a family, men and women together. It should not be reserved only for Orthodox men. It’s a shame.

Bella’s choice reflects fierce resistance to the Orthodox monopoly, which has maintained the exclusion of women in the Israeli public sphere. In this case, the struggle for gender equality intersected with the conflict of the Israeli Reform movement for formal recognition in the most sacred Jewish place (Charme 2005; Lahav 2000), which is also consecrated as a Zionist national symbol (Handelman and Katz 1995). Also, the fact that she dealt with a response accepted by a man, symbolizes the construction of male control in the Jewish discourse.

Bella’s daughter’s private Bat Mitzvah has, thus, become a political performance and blurs the distinction between an individual’s choice and social rights. In addition, by using the term “real,” without even recognizing it, Bella defines Robinson Arch as a fake or non-authentic holy place. Bella confirmed the “real” Kotel (Western Wall) as the place controlled by halakhic rules and laws. Ironically, this paradoxical statement, which approves the Orthodox as the authentic Judaism while rejecting its authority, expresses the depth of the Jewish Orthodox hegemony in the constructions of secularism and religiosity, and profane and holiness among the Israeli public.

In addition, another reason that may clarify why this was not considered as “the real” Kotel is explained by the fact that the prayer section of the Western Wall is consecrated by more than just “Orthodox practice or possession,” it is an Israeli icon. The place where IDF soldiers cried in Six Days War 1967, the site of Memorial Day ceremonies. Historical origins notwithstanding, for most Israelis it is the “real thing” (even if the Orthodox did not control access).

Discussion

This article concludes that an Israeli Reform Bat Mitzvah is a gender-political performance, challenging patriarchal Jewish Orthodox norms and perceptions and manifesting the long conflict of the Reform movement for public recognition. I conclude that Bat Mitzvah rituals do not reproduce passive performance that expresses existed situation or phenomenon but includes radical and subversive basics that challenge permanent religious and gender norms and social rules. On one hand, by doing rituals, the Reform congregation determines and maintains Jewish boundaries and traditions. On the other hand, these ceremonies have challenged traditional gendered perceptions and advance social change, not only for gender equality but also for Jewish equality.

Ironically, the resistance toward the Orthodox monopoly does not abolish halakhic laws and perceptions which are already embedded in the Israelis’ minds. Orthodox Judaism is still accepted as the formal authority, the authentic landscape for appropriate observance. Therefore, in the same vein as Rich (2007), who coined the phrase “Compulsory Heterosexuality,” ⁷ I reframe these responses as “Compulsory Orthodoxy.” The congregants’ use of terms such as “normal,” “real,” and “regular” show that the Reform Bat Mitzvah is still considered as an exceptional performance in Israel.

I have shown that the performance is more than a way to express religious identity (Markowitz 2001), educational experiences (Bacon 2008), or fashionable consumer trends (Schoenfeld 1988; Shoham 2015); it is a political space to construct gender empowerment and feminine religiosity. The ethnography demonstrates how, through text, material-objects, and space, the ritual has become a political act, which illuminates the intersection between the marginalization of the Reform congregation and its fight for parity and the local feminist resistance to chauvinism and patriarchy. Comparing to the Bar Mitzvah ceremony which is constructed by familiar structure, Bat Mitzvah is characterized by flexibility and creative opportunities of recreation appropriated performance. It is connected to previous historical rituals that women found as alternatives to celebrate their femininity and religiosity (Lavi 2005).

Still, there is not only one feminist strategy to achieve this mission. On the one hand, some rituals demonstrated liberal feminist values, based on preserving traditional patterns and reclaiming masculine customs. The feminine liturgy in the contemporary Reform Bat Mitzvah, including language, feminine metaphors, and biblical women figures, affirms that traditional mythic language and equalizes women’s position to that of men (Marx 2009, 2015a). On the other hand, gender equality was also expressed by radical feminist performances, such as Torah reading without wearing a tallit and Rabbi Chovav’s liturgical changes and suggested diverse feminine gestures.

Reform Bat Mitzvah ceremonies are hybrid rituals that contain national, gender, and religious perceptions and expose social constructions. For example, as the descriptions show, some perspectives regarding feminine codes in the religious context were interpreted differently by the girls and their mothers. Sometimes, there is an ideological gap between them, which exposed different points of view on gender equality. In other cases, such as in Keren’s daughter ceremony, the inter-generational connection was expressed when the mother who had not had the privilege to celebrate Bat Mitzvah when she was young, now experienced it through her daughter. Thus, the ritual is revealed as a bridge between women from different generations and social means for developing sisterhood. Furthermore, the congregants’ interpretations study did not support this binary distinction. The definition of the feminist type was not seen as an issue among the women compare to the performance itself. The ritual’s order, the symbols, and the space express their agenda regarding the intersection of religion and gender. The naming of the “feminist” type or Jewish sector was not a common discussion among them.

Indeed, as this article also demonstrated, the issue of gender inequality in religion has always been discussed by examining diverse strategies to cope with the situation, particularly among religions that are characterized in patriarchal belief and practice (El-Or 2002; Shahar 2018). However, the political struggle of women for equality does not always remote their participation in traditional rituals or prevent their creative new performances and interpretations.

This gender politics is intersected with the political marginality of the Reform movement in Israel. The political conflict affects the ritual’s structure, such as the decision as to where to place the performance. Thus, a private Bat Mitzvah at the Western Wall has represented the Reform movement conflict in achieving an equal place in the public sphere. The experience of being “there”—at the Western Wall—made the celebration a protest and made the protest a celebration. Life-cycle rituals that are performed in a particular place present a political conflict over the place (Low 2011). Therefore, returning to Turner’s conclusion regarding the role of obligation in the Nkang’a ritual (a Ndembu rite of passage for girls), this study presents a transformation of “obligation” from the single (Bat Mitzvah girl) to the social group (Israeli Reform congregation).

“Bat Mitzvah” in Hebrew means “daughter of the commandments” and shows that the phrase refers to a person rather than a ritual (Shoham 2015, 279). Nevertheless, as the ethnography demonstrates, Reform Bat Mitzvah challenges this terminology by exposing the socio-political mission of the performance. Therefore, this study strengthens the former researches which have focused on how life-cycle rituals have broader political implications. For example, Lustenberger’s (2013), shows that the Jewish rituals of circumcision for boys and childbirth celebrations for girls, when conducted by gay Israeli couples, allowed the parents’ choice to reinforce their family’s through Jewish ritual. These celebrations declare that LGBTQ families are an authentic part of the Jewish-Israeli collective, notwithstanding rabbinic opposition. In comparison, Reform Bat Mitzvah ceremonies also show similar strategy for public recognition.

However, there is a gap between the rabbis’ political clear resistance and the mothers’ perspectives. When for some women Bat Mitzvah was not framed as a practice of presenting feminism or Reform Judaism in Israeli society, for the Reform rabbis the ritual is a proof of Reform existence and relevancy in Israel. Therefore, this study elaborates that developing resistance is also an outcome of public positionality.

Consequently, I conclude that liberal religious communities may serve as are dominant social agents for gender recognition. Today, feminist activism is expressed not only by writing posts on social media or protesting in public marches but can also be developed through participation in religious rituals. This ethnographic conclusion promotes Neitz’s (2004) professional reading that researchers of religion should pay comprehensive attention to practices which expose how practices are embodied and gendered, and at the core of religious identification. The religious sphere is positioned as a relevant space advocating for the egalitarian mission, particularly in marginal religious groups that are free from institutional supervision or conservative rules (Seitz 2017; Young 2020). Israeli Reform Bat Mitzvah ceremonies demonstrate this egalitarian vision by presenting temporal fusions between renewal and conservatism.