“Bat mitzvah” is the Hebrew term meaning “daughter of the commandment” in a Jewish coming-of-age ceremony.
The phrase combines bat, meaning “daughter,” with mitzvah, meaning “commandment” or religious obligation. A bat mitzvah marks the point at which a Jewish girl traditionally becomes personally responsible for observing religious commandments, although customs and ages vary among Jewish movements and communities.
The feminine ceremony developed later than the traditional bar mitzvah. Judith Kaplan, daughter of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, is widely associated with the first publicly recognized American bat mitzvah, held in New York City in 1922. Her ceremony helped popularize a formal equivalent for girls in communities that had not previously used one.
Bat mitzvah is sometimes used for both the person and the event. In some communities, the plural form is b’not mitzvah or bat mitzvot, while “bar mitzvah” refers specifically to a boy or, more broadly in some modern usage, to the celebration itself.