Coming of Age into Obligation

Bar mitzvah (son of the commandment) and bat mitzvah (daughter of the commandment) mark the age at which a Jewish child becomes responsible for keeping the commandments, thirteen for a boy, twelve or thirteen for a girl. The status is automatic and arrives with the age; there is, strictly, no ceremony required to confer it. What developed, from the medieval period onward, was a public marking of the transition: the young person is called up to the Torah for the first time (an aliyah), often reads from the scroll or chants the prophetic portion, and is thereafter counted in a prayer quorum and bound by adult obligation.

The bat mitzvah is much more recent as a public rite, emerging in the twentieth century and observed very differently across the Jewish spectrum, from a full Torah reading in liberal communities to a quieter recognition in Orthodox ones. Beneath the party that now often accompanies it, the meaning the tradition assigns is narrow and precise: not that a child has grown up, but that a person has entered the community of the commanded.