The Liminality of Bat/Bar Mitzvah and Adolescence

Marcus, "Bar Mitzvah, Bat Mitzvah, Confirmation"
Lifecycles, "Adolescence"

Bar mitzvah began as the point in time when a male was ready to take on the commandments prescribed by the Torah, usually defined as 13 years old and a day. After the rabbinic period, bar mitzvah was reinterpreted to be the time at which males could start performing mitzvoth. Centuries later, bar mitzvah changed from a simple temporal marker to an event in which the bar mitzvah was called to the Torah and recited a sermon. The rite of bar mitzvah developed for a short period of time in the 11th and 12th centuries, developed again in the 16th century, and became universal in the 19th and 20th centuries. It soon expanded to include parties and evolved to encompass bat mitzvahs. Utilizing van Gennep’s three stages of rites of passage, bar mitzvah transforms a child into the liminality of ritual, and finally, into the state of Jewish adulthood.

Bar and bat mitzvah occur in the middle of an awkward few years of the modernly invented life stage of adolescence. Adolescence battle with desires for change and consistency, and thus, it is difficult to ascertain when during adolescence ritual is important. Further questions about adolescent ritual arise, such as the need for the gendering of or ungendering of ritual and the level of such ritual’s publicity. In the identity searching characteristic of adolescence, how is it possible to incorporate ritual and its according gift of community without offending the individual in the liminality between childhood and adulthood?