The Research Training Interns (RTI) are nine Jewish girls in New York metropolitan-area high schools who have served for the past year on a research team with Ma’yan staff, building research skills, examining the history and culture of the Bat Mitzvah, and conducting an original study of girls’ attitudes and experiences related to this milestone in Jewish life.  Through an online survey of 11-15 year-old girls in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, that included demographic questions and an assessment of respondents’ Jewish and Bat Mitzvah-specific activities, the research also presented four fictional scenarios related to Bat Mitzvah.  Respondents were asked to read these “story stems” and to complete the narrative as they saw fit.

Sunday, this year of work culminated at “Today I am a Woman?: The Ma’yan Symposium on Bat Mitzvah,” an event for parents and Jewish youth professionals where the RTIs revealed initial findings from their research.  Using a novel presentation format, the RTIs presented in pairs to groups of attendees, arranged in circles around the auditorium at the JCC in Manhattan.  Each pair presented on a different topic related to their research—Material vs. Spiritual, Maturing and Learning, Competition and Conflict with Friends, “Judaism is Cool,” and Bat Mitzvah and Femininity—and rotated amongst the circles of attendees.  Every attendee was able to hear Interns present on every topic, and the small group format enabled the young researchers to engage in dialogue and discussion with their audience.

 The RTI presentations were followed by responses from a panel of experts.  Mark Oppenheimer, author of Thirteen and a Day: The Bar and Bat Mitzvah Across America, was appreciative of the RTIs’ finding that girls were actively discussing and negotiating their Bat Mitzvah wardrobe with their mothers, noting that he couldn’t imagine Bar Mitzvah boys having a similar conversation about clothing with their dads.  Judith Rosenbaum, Director of Public History at the Jewish Women’s Archive, put the RTIs’ research in the context of the brief and remarkable history of Bat Mitzvah, arguing that the introduction of the Bat Mitzvah provoked a deeper reckoning with gender equity in synagogues and Jewish ritual life than its promoters had imagined or intended.  Naomi Mark, a psychotherapist in private practice and mother of both a current and a former RTI, noted that B’nai Mitzvah are unique among coming-of-age rituals in American culture, because (unlike the debutante ball or the sweet sixteen party) they are open to everyone and an invitation into deeper and more substantive relationship with the community.  Finally, Sari Laufer, Associate Rabbi at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, remarked on her sense of history in working with Bat Mitzvah girls in particular, who are often the first women in their family to read from the Torah.

Rabbi Joy Levitt, Executive Director of The JCC in Manhattan, left attendees with a challenge to rethink the B’nai Mitzvah to make it more relevant to both the talents and passions of Jewish tweens and also to the needs of the Jewish community within which B’nai Mitzvah supposedly grant new status and responsibility.  Over the course of the coming months, Ma’yan will continue to analyze the data from this study, and plan to issue a final written report in the spring of 2010.  In the meantime, join us for a look at the possibilities for Jewish life post-Bat Mitzvah at our December Networking Workshop, “After the Big Day.”