At Judith Kaplan Eisenstein’s 1922 bat mitzvah, her father was Mordecai Kaplan, a founder of Reconstructionist Judaism.
Kaplan was a major twentieth-century Jewish thinker, rabbi, and educator. He founded the Society for the Advancement of Judaism in New York City, the congregation where Judith’s landmark ceremony took place.
Judith Kaplan Eisenstein’s bat mitzvah is widely recognized as the first American bat mitzvah. On March 18, 1922, she read from the Torah and delivered a speech at her father’s congregation. The ceremony helped establish a model for girls’ public participation in Jewish religious life.
The event did not immediately make bat mitzvah practice uniform across all Jewish communities. Different movements and congregations adopted the ceremony at different speeds, and traditions still vary in how girls and boys participate in Torah reading, prayer, and teaching.