Becoming a Bar/Bat/B’nai Mitzvah is a right of passage into adulthood, which marks the person’s ability to be held responsible for upholding the Mitzvah/Commandments. Bar/Bat are Aramaic words meaning “Boy/Bar,” and “Girl/Bat,” and B’nai is the non-gendered plural, so in all, it means boy/girl of the mitzvah. Around age 12-13 the individual becomes a bar/bat mitzvah, but there is a lot of preparation beforehand so that the person understands the religious services, what is expected of them, and can read a Torah scroll in its original Hebrew.

My wife and I, while undergoing the last stages of our conversion, have undertaken our synagogues adult B’nai mitzvah course per our sponsoring Rabbi’s advice. It will give us our first major Jewish life cycle event and will keep us from missing out on something that all young Jews undergo. In the first quarter of 2023, we will be leading a Saturday morning Shabbat service and be recognized as B’nai mitzvah. Our class is full of amazing people, our sponsoring rabbi is an amazing teacher of it and we’re so excited to be taking this course in our journey. 

It’s taken over a year and we’re in the home stretch of our conversion process, and in another year of classes (yesterday was our first class), we’ll be recognized as B’nai Mitzvah. Baruch Hashem!!!