Four Local Women; One B'Not Mitzvah

It was not an ordinary Bat Mitzvah service.

They were not typical bat mitzvah girls. In fact, one is a lawyer and synagogue president, one is a retired schoolteacher, one is a businesswoman who grew up in South Africa and one is a retired engineer.

What they had in common was their love for Judaism and their desire to be active participants in synagogue life. They were each inspired when their daughters read from the Torah on the occasion of their Bat Mitzvahs, and they individually began thinking about having a bat mitzvah of their own.

The four women, Fran Semaya of Middletown, Lynn Einbinder of Ocean Township, Iris Michaelson and Eve Brownstein of Rumson, came together at Congregation B’nai Israel (CBI) in Rumson on the morning of Nov. 23 to celebrate their B’not Mitzvah.

Surrounded by more than 200 congregants, family and friends, each had the opportunity to lead major parts of the service, to say the special prayers and to read directly from the Torah scrolls (the first five books of the Bible, written in Hebrew).

To prepare for their B’not Mitzvah, the four women studied Judaism for Adults for a year with Rabbi Jeff Sultar.

They began learning how to chant the Hebrew prayers and readings from Rob Fire. Then they asked teacher and friend, Jodi Woolley, to tutor them until they felt comfortable leading a service. They studied together and encouraged each other to learn.

Rabbi Sultar encouraged the women to have the B’not Mitzvah. He explained,  “you cannot have a bat mitzvah until you reach a certain age, but it’s never too late to have one after that.

In the past, women weren’t able to participate in Jewish life in an equal way to the men. Now that many synagogues are completely egalitarian, there are women who want to mark their Jewish coming of age in a way that was denied to them while growing up.

Semaya is president of CBI. Although she knows all the prayers and how services are run she never had any formal Hebrew language training.  

Growing up, her parents did not believe that girls should attend Hebrew School and refused to allow her to go. So when she walked her younger brother to Hebrew school, she would stay and listen at the door of his classroom. For a few years, a kind teacher allowed her to join them.  

Thereafter she attended services with her dad and sat with him in the second row until her Orthodox synagogue in Brooklyn asked her to sit in the women’s section, often by herself.

Inspired by her own daughter, Stefanie and her sons, David and Scott, she decided to finally learn Hebrew and study “trope,” the musical notations that indicate how to chant from the Torah. Semaya remarked, “being called to the Torah as a Bat Mitzvah is the most awesome feeling and doing it side by side with three other very special women makes the experience even more meaningful.”

Einbinder is a retired schoolteacher. She taught in a local public school and at CBI’s religious school. As a member of the synagogue for more than 40 years with her husband Jay, she witnessed her two daughters, Madeline and Susan, and hundreds of her students become Bar and Bat Mitzvahs.

When Einbinder retired, she decided she finally had the time to devote to studying and felt ready to become a Bat Mitzvah herself. “For the last 40 years, I have enjoyed being part of the family at CBI," she said. "I am very grateful to Eve, Iris and Fran for the time and effort that they have put into our studying during the past year and for the close feelings that we have come to cherish. I hope that our B’not Mitzvah will inspire other women so they will feel as wonderful as we do."

Michaelson grew up in a traditional Jewish family and attended an orthodox synagogue. Although she attended religious school from grades 1 through 8, five times a week for two hours each time with boys the same age, at age 13, boys became Bar Mitzvahs but girls did not.  

From that time forward, Michaelson and her female friends and relatives were relegated to the balcony at the synagogue, able to observe but not participate in the service

Although she had a masters degree in engineering from Stanford University and a successful career in telecommunications, Michaelson felt that something was missing from her life. She was active in synagogue life and participated in many services but she felt that her Jewish identity was not complete.

She was very proud of her daughter Laurie when she became a Bat Mitzvah at age 13 and felt the ritual of a Bat Mitzvah was incredibly meaningful and symbolic. When the opportunity arose to celebrate an adult B’not Mitzvah with a group of like-minded women, she jumped at it.  

Though I might not have been brave enough to do it myself, the group approach seemed ideal," Michaelson said. "As a group, each of us would support the other from the moment we would start learning, through several months of instruction and practice, to finally the joint Bat Mitzvah ritual itself. I have a much better appreciation today than I would have had at age 13 of all that being a Jewish adult offers and means to me.”

Brownstein has had a very different journey to becoming a Bat Mitzvah. A product of an interfaith family in South Africa, Eve was 10 years old when her Christian mother left family and her Jewish father raised her.  

He taught her to read Hebrew using a very old prayer book but as her twelfth birthday approached, she asked her father for lessons to become a Bat Mitzvah. 

However, her father refused, for a number of reasons, the most daunting reason being that no matter how Jewish she felt, according to Jewish law, she would need to undergo a conversion. Converting at such a young age was highly unusual and the Rabbis dissuaded her father from permitting her to pursue it.

Brownstein was determined to become Jewish and at the age of nineteen, the Beth Din Lay Conversion committee approved her to undergo the lengthy South African, Orthodox conversion.
The conversion took two years and three months but it did not include a Bat Mitzvah ceremony. Later, when Eve married and had children, she wondered, as her daughters each celebrated their B’not Mitzvah, whether it was even possible for her to have one. 
While chatting with women at CBI she was thrilled to learn that a few other women in the congregation also wanted to have the Bat Mitzvah. “I am thankful to my B’not Mitzvah sisters - Fran, Iris and Lynn - who have worked tirelessly and traveled this journey with me,” Brownstein said.

For more information about becoming an Adult Bar or Bat Mitzvah at CBI, contact Rabbi Sultar, 171 Ridge Road, Rumson, New Jersey or   email him at rabbisultar@cbirumson.org.

* Story written and provided by Suzanne Gottuso