Why aren't Bat Mitzvahs celebrated like Bar Mitzvahs?

amother

Tue, Jan 12 2010, 2:11 pm

I had my bas mitzva about a month after my brothers bar mitzva. Maybe thats why my parents put almost zero effort into my bas mitzva - it was exactly the same as the melave malka I held every year to celebrate my birthday. No extra nice food, only my school friends invited - I don't think my other sisters even hung around for it. My father took pictures, thats it. For some reason my other sisters had slightly nicer affairs - also at home but other people invited, etc.

I still bitterly resent it to this day and I will probably make my own dds bas mitzvas nice all women affairs. My sons bar mitzvas will be nice but not over the top.

Rodent

Tue, Jan 12 2010, 4:42 pm

Quite frankly in most cases I think it is a lot of sexism, whether or not people want to see it for what it is or deny it with the veil of different roles for the different sexes. Whilst this may be true, a lot of practices still favour males in many groups. There is absolutely no reason why a boy should get a huge celebration for a bar mitzva and a girl should have something small or nothing at all. I have nothing against small, our kids will all have a small celebration (boys AND girls when we are blessed with them).

P.S. Re: the b/g twins thing, they would have had celebrations in different years. Did she get nothing the year before (which is horrible btw) or just nothing at the time of the bar mitzva which is to be expected?

amother

Tue, Jan 12 2010, 5:37 pm

Quote:

P.S. Re: the b/g twins thing, they would have had celebrations in different years. Did she get nothing the year before (which is horrible btw) or just nothing at the time of the bar mitzva which is to be expected?

Nothing at all the year before. Not even a birthday cake with her name on it at his party (it was her birthday too).

Rodent - I agree with you. A lot of it is sexism with the excuse of different roles for the different sexes. I was always taught our roles are different but equally important. However, the older I get the more I come back to the women's role being viewed as less important. Therefore, less of a celebration.

freidasima

Tue, Jan 12 2010, 5:44 pm

I don't know about tznius but it really has to do with fashion IMHO. Today "equality" is the fashion in MO circles and we know that what happens in MO circles eventually trickles down in various ways to much of charedi circles and voila, all of a sudden you have Bas mitzvahs even among charedi women's groups that one never heard of a generation ago.

In my generation, girls had nothing. Our shul has very few kids, could count them on the fingers of both hands, and thus when one of us hit "the age" it was a really big thing for the very aged kehilla abroad. So we five or six girls when we reached "the age" had a big kiddush in shul for the whole kehila (like 60 people max) and the rav gave a drush, and our father's gave a drush and everyone enjoyed the herring and the cake and the kugel and all the old ladies pinched our cheeks and we got a siddur from the kehilla and it was lovely. Nothing untzinius, nothing expensive but made us feel like princesses. If our parents wanted to we had a party for our girlfriends from class and that was it. I have no idea what presents I got, it was no big deal, more for our aged kehila (average age 70 to our 12) than for us. No one had family practically, lots of Holocaust survivors, so no one had family come for shabbos.

Fast forward to my girls. Parties at home, with friends from school and bnai akiva, no hall, no entertainer, homemade food, but they were feeling discriminated against compared to their girlfriends who had big bashes. But as my mother always said, a boy gets a bris, a bar mitzva and when it comes to his wedding the girls end up paying for him there as well...yeah well, my mother was talking about abroad where it is customary that the girls parents make the wedding, not EY where everything is split. So that's why the boys got halls and the girls in the family didn't, because of this mistaken concept my mother had and I wasn't going to argue with her and get a mouthful for an entire generation. I was also not into making anything big for girls, that was for boys, not girls in my mind. Girls get to make decisions about the wedding. As for girls giving divrei torah, especially in mixed gatherings, I am not into that. I could give just as good a DT as dh I bet, but I won't do it even though he encourages me to speak in front of family (the kids etc.). I can get up in front of 400 psychologists and psychiatrists from all around the world to speak about our profession but I won't give a DT in front of 10 people. B"H I have a husband to do it. I'll teach the kids one on one but not in front of Dh.

Yeah I'm old fashioned in some things.

So my take is that it is feminism and equality which made us think of having bas mitzvah's in the first place, but there is still this old fashioned concept of the girls get to do whatever they want at their wedding - THAT is their show and the chossen, he should live and be well, would be smart to answer to everything "yes darling anything you want" when it comes to wedding setups.
Makes for a good marriage ahead (yep that's what dh said)

Just my two cents!

BinahYeteirah

Tue, Jan 12 2010, 5:45 pm

I am all for bas mitzvahs being small events, conducted in a tznius manner. I don't think I would do much more for a bar mitzvah, simply because I don't think that's the importance of the occasion.

Still, I don't see how one can say that there is a fundamental difference in the relative importance of a bar mitzvah verses a bas mitzvah. Yes, boys become chayav minyan and teffillin. Haven't they been davening in with a "minyan" since starting cheder? Of course, the way little boys daven in school is not the same a real minyan, but they do everything in an age appropriate way to be mechanech them to daven with a minyan at the right time. Once the boys are bar mitzvah, it is likely that they will attend a yeshiva minyan at least some of the time. So they are often attending the same minyan that they were before becoming bar mitzvah. I don't have boys this age, so maybe I just don't understand what happens with most boys. For the boys at the local school here, this is the case, where the boys daven in their own minyan. So it seems to me that there is a lot of continuity in the way that they daven before BM and after. Yes, they start to wear tefillin, although in most minhogim that I know of, that also starts a short while before the day of the BM (for chinuch!). Everything else, just like with girls, is going from doing it out of obligation rather than as chinuch alone.

The main thing for both boys and girls is that they have become chayav mitzvos as an adult. How can we say that the bar mitzvah is more important than the bas mitzvah, unless we also believe that the masculine mitzvos have more importance than feminine ones? Perhaps the change to adult masculine mitzvos are more public and concrete in some ways, but does that mean that there is no important change happening with the young woman as she become bas mitzvah? Of course not. Yes, kol kavudah bas melech penimah. We don't need tefillin to mark our amazing transformation into Jewish womanhood.

Apple pie

Thu, Jan 14 2010, 5:49 pm

BinahYeteirah wrote:

couldn't have said it better!

Merrymom

Sun, Jan 24 2010, 10:18 pm

I think parents who in an effort to save money choose not to make a bas-mitzvah are doing something truly horrible to their daughters. Somehow you come up with that money for the boys, but for the girls you find excuses by saying it's not tznius. So, don't invite any men. Why can't your daughter feel special on that day. Does your son need a party anymore than your daughter does. Put out some rolls for washing, let your son be called up to the Torah and finished. The truth is you are doing way more than you have to for your sons and nothing or almost nothing for your daughters and that is just so WRONG! I am so glad things are changing since I was a little girl when my bas-mitzvah was completely ignored (and most of my friends as well).

DrMom

Sun, Jan 31 2010, 11:51 am

Zus wrote:

In the community I come from, it's the custom to celebrate a bat mitzvah just as big as a bar mitzva. So you'll have a kiddush at shul on shabat in the week of the bat mitzvah, including a drasha from the rav.
Then on motzash or Sunday evening, there is a big(ish) party at a catering hall/hotel including dressed up guests, a band and a photographer.
The only difference between boys and girls is that a boy gets an aliya and a girl doesn't.
In my family, we also organise a limmud and it doesn't matter if it's for a boy or girl.

^^This.

For those of you who don't think it's fair to commemorate bat-mitvahs in a less showy way, why do you do it?

Chloe

Sun, Jan 31 2010, 12:35 pm

Merrymom wrote:

I am so with you on this. Except that I don't see any changes yet. But I will certainly celebrate the bas mitzvahs of my daughters iy"h.