Judith Kaplan had the first widely recognized American bat mitzvah, held in New York City in 1922.
Judith Kaplan was the daughter of Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism. On March 18, 1922, she took part in a bat mitzvah ceremony at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism in Manhattan, the congregation her father founded.
Kaplan’s ceremony differed from many later bat mitzvahs. She read a passage from the Torah in English after the regular service, rather than publicly chanting the Torah in the traditional manner. Even so, the event became an important milestone in the development of organized bat mitzvah practice in North America.
Bat mitzvah customs had existed or developed in different forms in Jewish communities, and no single event created the concept worldwide. Kaplan’s ceremony is specifically notable because it is widely cited as the first American bat mitzvah and helped establish a model later adopted and adapted by other communities.