It’s Never Too Late: On Becoming a Bar/Bat Mitzvah at Georgetown

By Rabbi Ilana Zietman, Director for Jewish Life

“You don’t really have a bar or bat mitzvah, you become one.” This is how I like to begin the opening session of Jewish Life’s B’nai Mitzvah Program. 

I started the program last year when a Georgetown Law Center student asked me and our law school Jewish chaplain, Michael Goldman, if she could study for a bat mitzvah ceremony while still a student. From my experience working with Jewish young adults, I knew she was far from the only student at Georgetown to not have gone through this rite of passage earlier in life, so I thought, “Why not? Let’s see who else is interested!”

Many people associate the bar or bat mitzvah experience with a middle school-aged kid singing in front of a synagogue audience and later being raised in a chair at a party. What they often don’t realize is that these public rituals are there to celebrate a change of religious status, marking the moment a person is considered an adult, which is automatically conferred on a 12-year-old girl or a 13-year-old boy (traditionally). By “adult,” we mean spiritually independent and able to fully participate in the religious life of the Jewish community. “Bar or Bat Mitzvah” literally means the “son or daughter or child of the mitzvot,” the commandments required to live one’s religious and ethical life as a Jew. By this definition, any Jewish person over this age is already a bar or bat mitzvah. Not having an official ceremony or a party does not change that fact. 

However, given how much preparation, education, and communal celebration go into these moments, it’s a rite of passage that those who didn’t experience it understandably feel that they’ve lost out on. At times, it can make people feel separated from their Jewish peers and community. Whether because their family didn’t belong to a synagogue growing up (or have one nearby), because they didn’t want to have one at the time, because the COVID pandemic canceled their ceremony, or even because they converted to Judaism later in life, plenty of young Jewish people today find themselves looking to affirm their Jewish identities and commitments to living a Jewish life by having a bar/bat mitzvah ceremony now. 

So, what started as a request from a single student blossomed into a cohort experience where students would learn some Hebrew, understand the inner workings of Jewish law, ritual, sacred texts, theology, and of course, learn how to chant directly from the Torah. Some who weren’t given a Hebrew name when they were younger got to choose their own to be used during the ceremony (and have with them for the rest of their lives). 

Last year, twelve students from across a variety of graduate and undergraduate programs signed up for our pilot program. This year, seven students across class years and schools took part. After a semester of intensive prep, we hold a Shabbat morning prayer service together with participants’ families and friends, during which the students are individually called up to bless the Torah, chant verses from the scroll, and give an original d’var Torah (sermon) about that week’s Torah portion. We then celebrate later that evening with a traditional party filled with horas, chair lifting, photo slideshows, and a cake candle-lighting ceremony. 

The Jewish Life B’nai Mitzvah program at Georgetown has been a gift to our community in ways I wouldn’t have imagined. The students choosing to take on this learning and affirm their place as active and knowledgeable members of the Jewish community have been more of an inspiration to their peers than they realize. They show all of us that being actively Jewish is a lifelong pursuit, that it is an identity not to take for granted, and that it is never too late to claim one’s religious inheritance and place in our community. 

Rising sophomore Lucy Rotenberg (C’29) said, celebrating her Bat Mitzvah at 18, at a Catholic, Jesuit university, may seem unconventional, but it felt exactly right. ”The program affirmed my Jewish identity, welcoming me into a culture of inclusivity, curiosity, and warmth. The ceremony and celebration were so joyful for my family and me, and seeing friends supporting me was so valuable, especially at the end of freshman year, just having moved to a new part of the country without knowing anyone. More importantly, I really do feel more confident in the idea that I am Jewish, and I am so excited to keep learning.”

As for me, it’s been incredibly fulfilling as a teacher to engage in Torah study and deep conversation with these students. To talk about what Jewish tradition understands as “adulthood” through this process with people in their late teens and early twenties is a different kind of conversation than how it normally goes with middle schoolers. We discuss the original rabbinic idea that becoming an adult means being taken at your word and being responsible for one’s own spiritual and moral life, as well as that of the larger Jewish community. We also talk about independence and decision-making, and what that can look like in their lives while they’re currently living on their own and are already gaining independence in a variety of ways. We talk about the wisdom Judaism holds for living a meaningful life and the ways in which it can be a source of comfort and inspiration in hard times.

This program has also expanded the reach of those involved in Jewish Life on campus. While a few students in the program are already folks I regularly see throughout the week and on holidays, most have been brand new to our campus activities. I now see these students show up with more Jewish confidence and an understanding of what they can contribute to Jewish life at Georgetown and at home. 

I can’t thank these students enough for the joy, invigoration and community pride they have brought into the larger Jewish Georgetown community. As we’ve discussed in our cohort, becoming a bar/bat/b’nai mitzvah isn’t really the end of a process, it’s just the beginning. Mazal tov to our latest cohort of b’nai mitzvah students!

If you are interested in learning more about the Jewish Life B’nai Mitzvah program, please be in touch with Rabbi Ilana at ilana.zietman@georgetown.edu. 

We’re so grateful to a dedicated Hoya alum for supporting this program.